WARLIKE 
ENGLAND 

AS  SEEN  BY  HERSELF 


FERDINAND  TONNES 


PAUL  K.  KATT 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

As  Seen  by  Herself 


BY 

FERDINAND   TONNIES 

Professor  at  the  University  of  Kid ;  Advising  Editor  of  tlte  American 

Journal  of  Sociology ;  President  of  the  German 

Sociological  Society 


Mere  cant,  however  seriously  put  forth  in  official  statements,  no 
longer  blinds  educated  public  opinion  as  to  the  facts  in  these 
acts  of  international  brigandage. — W.  Morgan  Shuster,  ex- 
Treasurer-General  of  Persia,  The  Strangling  of  Persia,  (1912), 
p.  222. 


G.  W.  DILLINGHAM  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


Copyright,  1915,  by 
G.  W.  DILLINGHAM  COMPANY 


Warlike  England 


Press  of 
J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Co. 

New  York 


SANfA  BAiiBAiU 


"Be  the  Government  Liberal  or  Tory,  much  the  same  thing  hap- 
pens— war  with  all  its  horrors  and  miseries  and  crimes  and  cost. 
Talkers  and  writers  being  mostly  in  favor  of  it,  and  the  multitude 
approving  or  consenting  to  the  wickedness  in  high  places."  (John 
Bright  to  a  friend,  1885  Ct.  Trevelyan,  "Life  of  John  Bright," 
P-  437-) 

"The  English  nation  ....  is  the'most  estimable  agglomera- 
tion of  human  beings,  considered  in  its  relation  to  each  other.  But 
as  a  state  in  its  relations  with  other  states  it  is  the  most  pernicious, 
the  most  violent,  the  greediest  for  power  and  the  most  bellicose  of 
all." — (Immanuel  Kant.) 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword 7 

Introduction 11 


PART  I 

THE  ENGLISH  WORLD  POLICY  UP  TO  THE  FALL 

OF  NAPOLEON 

First  Division:  Wars  Against  Spain,  Against  Hol- 
land, and  Against  France  from  the  Sixteenth  to 
the  Eighteenth  Century 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  The  Expansion  of  England.  Eliza- 
beth, Cromwell,  the  Restoration. 
Buccaneers 27 

II.     Commerce    and    War — The    Ethical 

Motives 37 

IH.    The  Glories  of  Pitt,  the  Elder:  Tri- 
umph over  France 50 

IV.    The    Loss    of    the    North    American 

Colonics 53 

V.     The  Slave  Trade  as  the  Pillar  of  the 

Empire 58 

VI.    The  Conquest  of  India 62 


CONTENTS 

Second  Division:  War  Against  the  French  Republic 
and  Against  Napoleon 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VII.    Attack   upon   the   French   Republic. 

The  European  Balance  of  Power     .       77 

VIII.    The  Piratical  Expedition  Against  Den- 
mark      83 


PART  II 

THE  ENGLISH  WORLD  POLICY  IN  THE  NINE- 
TEENTH AND  TWENTIETH  CENTURIES 

Third  Division:    Quarrels  in  Three  Parts  of  the 
Earth 

LX.  Afghanistan 103 

X.  The  Opium  War 115 

XL  The  Crimean  War 128 

XII.  The  Ionian  Islands 134 

XIII.  Jamaica 138 

XIV.  The    War    of    the    Slave-owners    in 

America 144 

XV.    The  Indian  Mutiny 150 

Fourth  Division:   The  Newer  Imperialism 

XVI.    Egypt 154 

XVH.    The  Boer  War 170 

XVIII.    Persia 182 

XLX.    The  World  War  of  1914    ....  188 

Conclusion 202 


FOREWORD 

This  book  has  been  written  in  the  cause  of 
truth. 

The  testimony  of  the  most  respected  English 
authors  cannot  be  controverted.  It  throws 
the  best  light  upon  the  existing  European 
crisis. 

This  book  has  not  been  written  to  stir  up  na- 
tional hatred.  The  author  distinguishes 
sharply  between  the  English  people  and  the 
English  world-policy.  Even  the  leaders  of 
this  policy  have  for  the  most  part  only  an  in- 
complete knowledge  of  the  driving  forces  be- 
hind it. 

The  English  folk  is  made  up  of  elements 
differing  greatly  from  one  another.  Besides 
the  real  Englishmen  are  Scots,  Welshmen, 
Irishmen  and  the  manifold  mixtures  of  these 
races;  thereto  are  to  be  reckoned  descendants 
of  Germans,  Flemings,  Frenchmen,  Scandina- 
vians, and  others.  Furthermore,  character 
and  habits  of  thought  vary  greatly  with  differ- 
ent occupations,  callings  and  social  position. 
That  is  to  say,  they  are  manifold  and  complex. 

7 


8  FOREWORD 

In  England,  however,  more  than  in  other 
lands,  the  upper  classes  are  looked  up  to  and 
imitated  by  the  lower. 

The  real  ruling  power  in  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  has  for  centuries  been  in  the  hands  of 
the  "squirearchy,"  as  it  is  often  termed  in  mod- 
ern days.  This  "squirearchy"  permits  the 
leaders  of  the  commercial  and  monied  aristoc- 
racy to  flourish  alongside  it,  and  even  takes 
them  into  its  ranks — a  procedure  not  synony- 
mous with  the  much  more  frequent  "raising  to 
the  peerage."  The  relation  is  based  upon  the 
tacit  understanding  that  it  is  England's  des- 
tiny to  rule  and  exploit  the  earth  for  the  en- 
richment of  these  classes. 

In  the  last  fifty  years  the  real  body  of  the 
people,  especially  the  laboring  class,  has, 
through  the  press  and  through  its  parliamen- 
tary representation,  won  a  growing  influence 
over  these  its  masters,  but  only  in  affairs  of  do- 
mestic policy.  The  foreign  policy  has  re- 
mained the  domain  of  the  oligarchy.  The 
people  have  only  the  right  and  the  oppor- 
tunity to  sit  by  as  spectators,  to  applaud — and 
to  hiss  when  the  play  is  over. 

And  ever  anew  the  people  of  Great  Britain 
permit  themselves  to  listen  to — and  to  be 
moved  to  applaud — the  assertion  that  ethical 
motives  govern  the  conduct  of  English  world- 


FOREWORD 


policy  and  the  incitements  of  wars  for  which 
this  policy  is  responsible. 

Let  us  see  how  it  stands  with  these  ethical 
motives. 

THE   AUTHOR. 


INTRODUCTION 

Why  did  England  declare  war  on  the  Ger- 
man Empire? 

The  King  and  his  ministers,  writers  of  every 
kind,  in  newspapers,  magazines  and  books, 
have  replied  to  the  question  with  the  ringing 
answer:  For  ethical  reasons.  "We  fight 
Prussia  in  the  noblest  cause  for  which  men 
can  fight.  That  cause  is  the  public  law  of 
Europe,  as  a  sure  shield  and  buckler  of  all 
nations,  great  and  small,  and  especially  the 
small.  To  the  doctrine  of  the  almightiness  of 
the  state — to  the  doctrine  that  the  means  are 
justified  which  are,  or  seem,  necessary  to  its 
self-preservation,  we  oppose  the  doctrine  of 
a  European  society,  or  at  least,  of  European 
cumity  of  nations,  within  which  all  States 
stand;  we  oppose  the  doctrine  of  a  public  law 
of  Europe,  by  which  all  States  are  bound  to 
respect  the  covenants  they  have  made.  We 
will  not  and  cannot  tolerate  the  view  that  na- 
tions are  "in  the  state  and  posture  of  gladia- 
tors" in  their  relations  one  with  another;  we 
stand  for  the  reign  of  law.  .  .  .  We  are  a  peo- 

ii 


12  INTRODUCTION 

pie  in  whose  blood  the  cause  of  law  is  the 
vital  element." * 

Thus  speak  the  six  members  of  the  Oxford 
faculty  of  modern  history,  men  who  have  the 
right  to  expect  that  their  voice  shall  be  heard. 
They  are  the  spokesmen  of  a  public  opinion 
which  is  widespread  in  Great  Britain.  It  may 
be  wondered  whether  it  is  widespread  in  Ire- 
land. Does  Ireland,  too,  believe  that  the  cause 
of  law  is  the  vital  element  in  the  blood  of  the 
Englishman?  That  England  assumes  with 
tenderness,  out  of  the  courage  of  nobility,  the 
protection  of  small  nations?  That  it  battles 
for  them  against  militarism  for  the  cause  of 
justice? 

"England  did  her  best  to  annihilate  Irish 
commerce  and  to  ruin  Irish  agriculture. 
Statutes  passed  by  the  jealousy  of  English  land- 
owners forbade  the  export  of  Irish  cattle  or 
sheep  to  English  ports.  The  export  of  wool 
was  forbidden,  lest  it  might  interfere  with  the 
profits  of  English  wool-growers.  Poverty  was 
thus  added  to  the  curse  of  misgovernment,  and 
poverty  deepened  with  the  rapid  growth  of 
the  native  population,  till  famine  turned  the 
country  into  a  hell."  .  .  . 

"The  murders  and  riots  which  sprang  from 

1  "Why  We  Are  at  War ;  Great  Britain's  Case."    By  mem- 
bers of  the  Oxford  faculty  of  modern  history,  pp.  115,  116. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

time  to  time  out  of  the  general  misery  and  dis- 
content were  roughly  repressed  by  the  ruling 
class."  .  .  . 

"For  a  while,  however,  the  Protestant  land- 
owners, banded  together  in  'Orange  Societies/ 
held  the  country  down  by  sheer  terror  and 
bloodshed.  .  .  .  Ireland  was  in  fact  driven  in- 
to rebellion  by  the  lawless  cruelty  of  the 
Orange  yeomanry  and  the  English  troops." 

The  references  are  to  the  period  preceding 
the  Union  (1800).  Are  the  quotations  per- 
haps taken  from  a  handbook  for  Irish  agita- 
tors? No,  they  are  statements  employed  by  an 
English  historian  of  general  repute,  T.  R. 
Green,  M.  A.,  one-time  examiner  in  the  school 
for  modern  history  at  Oxford.1 

"For  an  Irishman  it  is  no  moral  offence  to 
deny  the  moral  authority  of  the  Act  of  Union. 
In  my  opinion  the  Englishman  has  far  more 
cause  to  blush  for  the  means  by  which  that  act 
was  obtained."  These  are  the  words  of  "the 
Grand  Old  Man,"  William  Ewart  Gladstone, 
before  a  committee  of  Parliament  in  1890. 
The  reference  was  to  the  fact  that  the  Union 
had  been  achieved  only  through  monstrous 
bribery. 

1  "A  Short  History  of  the  English  People."  London,  1875, 
pp.  786-788.  More  than  a  half  million  copies  of  the  book 
have  been  circulated   in   England. 


i4  INTRODUCTION 

And  what  of  Ireland  after  the  Union?  Ire- 
land in  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth  century? 
The  history  of  her  people  speaks  a  plain  lan- 
guage. Ireland  had  in  1841  about  8,200,000 
inhabitants,  or  about  97  to  the  square  kilo- 
meter (247.1  acres),  no  very  dense  population 
for  the  fruitful  green  island,  that  being  about 
the  same  population  per  kilometer  as  that  of 
Austria  now.  In  the  year  191 1,  however,  70 
years  later,  the  population  of  Ireland  had  sunk 
to  about  4,400,000,  a  decrease  of  nearly  one- 
half.  In  these  70  years  the  population  of  all 
other  European  lands  increased  steadily;  in 
many  it  doubled  or  more  than  doubled.  In 
Ireland  it  was  halved.  The  density  of  popula- 
tion fell  from  97  to  52  per  square  kilometer. 

Will  England,  with  its  "Union  of  Nations," 
operate  upon  the  other  European  nations  as 
it  has  operated  upon  neighboring  Ireland 
through  its  union  with  that  country? 

What  do  the  other  nations  think  of  the  bless- 
ings of  this  "European  society,"  which  is  to 
be  headed  by  England  as  the  representative  of 
justice? 

"Justice  for  Ireland"  was  Gladstone's  pa- 
thetic demand.  A  contest  of  thirty  years' 
duration  was  necessary  to  secure  a  safe  ma- 
jority for  a  law  designed  to  give  back  to  the 
Irish  nation  the  right  of  self-government.  The 


INTRODUCTION  15 

law  was  finally  passed — and  the  King  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland  had  to  declare  (in  June, 
19 14)  that  the  country  stood  on  the  thresh- 
old of  civil  war.  The  Government  was  com- 
pelled to  stand  by  and  observe  how  the  rebel- 
lion was  being  systematically  prepared,  how 
the  indignation  against  an  imperial  law  was 
nourished,  furthered  and  conducted,  how  it 
received  the  approval  and  support  of  a  party 
whose  electoral  strength  in  Great  Britain  is 
nearly  equal  to  that  of  the  party  in  power.  .  .  . 
"We  stand  for  the  reign  of  law,"  say  the  edu- 
cators, who  presumably  belong  to  this  party. 
And  what  was  the  meaning  of  this  indigna- 
tion? The  meaning  was  and  is  that  Ireland 
is  not  to  obtain  its  rights,  that  it  is  to  suffer 
further  under  the  servitude  which  has  crushed 
and  suffocated  it  for  centuries. 

Whether  the  moral  argument — for  thus  we 
may  term  the  putting  forth  of  ethical  and  le- 
gal grounds  as  the  basis  for  the  English  world 
policy — will  work  convincingly  upon  Irish 
minds  may  fairly  be  doubted.  Where  people 
have  not  become  acquainted  with  this  policy 
in  such  a  direct  manner,  or  where  they  have 
forgotten  their  impressions,  this  argument 
will  still  find  credence.  It  finds  credence  be- 
cause it  is  good,  and  when  men  are  not  angry 
or  embittered  they  are  readier  to  believe  that 


16  INTRODUCTION 

the  motives  of  others  are  good  than  that  they 
are  bad,  in  like  degree  as  they  are  readier 
to  impute  good  than  bad  motives  to  them- 
selves. 

For  this  reason  the  moral  argument  is  espe- 
cially designed  for  feminine  intelligences  and 
finds  a  responsive  chord  there  most  readily, 
in  part  because  women  gladly  sympathize  with 
and  become  enthusiastic  for  noble  motives,  in 
part  because  even  educated  women  seldom 
possess  an  exact  knowledge  of  diplomatic  con- 
ditions and  still  more  seldom  a  profound 
knowledge  of  history.  But  both  these  branches 
of  knowledge  are  necessary  to  a  right  judg- 
ment of  the  moral  argument. 

The  soul  of  a  folk  resembles  the  soul  of  a 
woman.  It  is  always  difficult  to  penetrate 
and  lay  bare  the  facts  beneath  the  surface 
of  things.  For  this  tools  and  apparatus  are 
needed  which  are  not  at  the  disposal  of  every 
one. 

Hamlet  wonders  that  "one  may  smile  and 
smile  and  be  a  villain,"  but  Hamlet's  step- 
father and  uncle  only  keeps  on  smiling.  Nay 
more,  he  also  makes  solemn  speeches.  He 
speaks  of  his  dead  brother,  whom  he  has  poi- 
soned, "with  wisest  sorrow."  His  thoughts 
have  contended  with  his  emotions.  Statecraft 
demanded  that  he  take  the  widowed  queen  as 


INTRODUCTION  17 

his  wife — "with  one  auspicious  and  one  drop- 
ping eye." 

Shakespeare  more  than  once  pictures  with 
classic  lines  the  hypocrite,  with  the  honeycomb 
of  upright  thoughts  and  ethical  motives  upon 
his  lips. 

Hvpocrisv  has  often  been  termed  the  nation- 
al vice  of  the  English.  A  noted  English  au- 
thor of  the  most  modern  times,  Bernard  Shaw, 
says  in  his  article  on  the  present  war: 

IfWe  know  that  even  in  circles  that  are  most 
friendly  to  the  English  nation  an  opinion  is 
going  abroad  that  our  excellent  qualities 
are  being  disfigured  by  an  incorrigible  hypoc- 
risy. 

He  is  of  the  opinion  that  this  reputation 
cannot  have  arisen  entirely  without  ground. 
In  particular,  he  considers  it  to  be  founded 
on  the  attitude  of  English  statesmen.  As  a 
type  in  this  connection  he  names  Sir  Edward 
Grey. 

In  reality,  the  conscious,  shameless  hypo- 
crite, who  deliberately  and  continuously  plays 
a  comedy,  is  a  rare  figure.  The  role  of  an  hon- 
orable man  is  so  hard  for  a  base  man,  that  of 
a  severely  moral  man  is  so  hard  for  a  Tartufre, 
that,  in  life  as  well  as  on  the  stage,  he  is  usually 
very  speedily  unmasked. 

Much  more  frequent,  because  much  easier, 


18  INTRODUCTION 


is  the  half-conscious  or  even  the  quarter-con- 
scious hypocrisy,  the  conduct  of  the  man  gov- 
erned not  by  very  evil,  but  by  mediocre,  com- 
mon and  unbeautiful  motives,  and  who  under- 
stands how  to  disguise  these  motives  with  glit- 
tering finery  and  adorn  them  with  pious  and 
virtuous  speeches.  The  basis  of  this  is  fre- 
quently a  mixture  of  praiseworthy  shame  with 
reprehensible  dissimulation,  for,  as  Lord  Ba- 
con fittingly  remarks  in  one  of  his  essays, 
nakedness  of  mind,  like  nakedness  of  body,  is 
unseemly.  One  may  add  to  this  that  even  in 
the  case  of  clothes  designed  to  conceal 
thoughts,  more  weight  is  laid  upon  their  pleas- 
ing other  people  than  upon  their  being  genu- 
ine and  worthy.  In  like  manner  the  wise  man 
imposes  holy  and  apparently  natural  wrinkles 
upon  his  face,  which  can  so  easily  betray  his 
real  thoughts,  rather  than  to  tie  before  it  an 
uncomfortable  mask  which  can  deceive  only 
from  afar.  Practice  makes  perfect  here  also, 
and  habit  becomes  second  nature. 

This  remarkable  mixture  of  shame  and 
hypocrisy  is  entirely  alien  to  no  individual, 
certainly  to  no  nation.  But  it  is  a  noteworthy 
fact  that  precisely  in  the  English  nation,  which 
is  not  without  strength  and  greatness  in  evil 
as  well  as  in  good,  there  is  to  be  found  a 
marked  inclination  and  talent  for  it,  and  that 


INTRODUCTION  19 


English  politicians,  who  may  be  upright  and 
honorable  men  in  private  life,  show  themselves 
in  state  affairs  to  be  masters  of  that  art 
which  Socrates  branded  as  the  particular 
art  of  the  Sophists — that  of  making  the  bad 
cause  appear  the  better  by  devious,  involved 
speeches. 

It  is  hardly  an  accident  that  the  English" 
language  has  found  a  special,  untranslatable 
word  for  this  peculiar  attitude  of  mind,  which 
finds  its  purest  expression  in  twisted  but  high- 
sounding  words,  designed  to  disguise  motives. 
This  is  the  word  "cant,"  which  philologists 
derive  from  the  Latin  cantus  (song),  as  if  a 
singsong  manner  of  delivery  favored  this  man- 
ner of  speaking,  which  is  essentially  so  deeply 
insincere,  and  yet  half  believed  by  the  speaker 
himself.  For  cant  possesses  also  this  peculiar 
attribute:  The  oftener  it  is  repeated,  or  the 
louder  it  is  proclaimed,  by  so  much  more  is 
it  not  only  believed  and  enthusiastically  ac- 
cepted, but  even  those  who  first  gave  it  cur- 
rency believe  it  themselves,  and  continue  to 
assert  it  with  greater  assurance  and,  therefore, 
with  greater  effect. 

The  English  themselves,  among  whom  the 
truth-loving  man  is  by  no  means  rare,  have  not 
lacked  a  realization  of  this  shamefaced  hypoc- 
risy   (as   one   may    perhaps   translate   cant). 


2o  INTRODUCTION 


Lord  Byron  repeatedly  expressed  himself  with' 
repugnance  and  bitterness  concerning  it.1  A 
special  treatise  concerning  cant,  published  in 
1887  by  Sidney  Whitman,2  gave  occasion  for 
much  comment.    Even  the  most  zealous  advo- 

1  Countess  of  Blessington.     Conversations  with  Lord  Byron, 

passim. 

2  "Conventional    Cant,    Its   Result    and    Remedy."      London, 
1887.    The  title  and  the  name  of  the  author  had  escaped  my 
memory.      After   I    had   finished   this   work   I    found   both    in 
Moritz  Busch's  "Leaves  From  My  Diary,"  III,  p.  221.     Busch 
wrote — at  Prince  Bismarck's  orders,    as  ever — two   articles  in 
the  Grenzboten,  entitled  "An  Evil  Spirit  in  the  England  of  To- 
day."    {Grenzboten,  1888,  p.  377  et  seq.,  p.  533  et  seq.)     I  find 
therein    (p.   534)    the  following  sentence,   which  is   in   perfect 
agreement   with   my   own   conception:     "The    expression    cant 
means,    then,    untruthfulness,    but    joined    to    the    feeling    that 
one  is  truthful  or  is  telling  the  truth;  the  deceiving  of  others 
which   is   at   the   same   time   a   self-deception."     I    learn   also 
that  Carlyle  described  cant  as  the  art  of  making  things  appear 
to  be  what  they  are  not,  "an  art  of  6uch  deadly  nature  that 
it  deadens  the  very  soul  of  those  who  employ  it  by  leading 
them  beyond  the  stage  of  conscious  falsehood  to  a  point  where 
they   believe    in    their    own   mad    representations,    and    brings 
them  down  to  the  most  miserable  condition  conceivable,  where 
one   is  honestly   dishonest."     Carlyle   is  reported  to   have   ex- 
claimed  on    one   occasion    (the  exact   passage   is   not   given) : 
"Cant,  thou  curse  of  our  nation!"    I  have  thus  far  been  unable 
to  get  hold  of  Whitman's  book.     But  I  just  discover  an  ad- 
mirable  article   upon   "Cant"   in  the  Ne<w  Statesman  of  Jan- 
uary 23,   191 5    (vol.  iv,  No.   94).     Cant  is  defined  therein  as 
"the  singsong  of  the  self-righteous."    "It  is  praise  and  prayer 
from  the  nose    instead  of   from  the   heart.  ...  It   enables  us 
to  cut  a  presentable  figure  before  our  neighbors,  and  not  only 
to  deceive  ourselves,   but  to  deceive  ourselves  into   the  belief 
that  we  are  deceiving  others.     England  is  supposed  by  many 
people  to  be  the  world's  factory  of  cant,  and  her  annual  pro- 
duction  of  the   article   certainly   reaches   a   creditable   figure." 
The  writer   believes,    however,   that   if   Germany   should   win 
the  war,  she  would  become  the  leading  exporter  of  cant  among 
the  nations  of  Europe. 


INTRODUCTION  21] 

cates  of  the  English  claims  to  be  the  first  na- 
tion of  the  world  must  confess  that  a  peculiar 
condition  exists  in  regard  to  cant.  But  no  one 
believes  that  cant  can  be  exterminated.  It  has 
always  flourished  in  foreign  politics  and  in 
war.  Lord  Cromer,  one  of  the  most  respected 
men  of  the  country  (although  of  German 
descent,  from  the  Baring  family),  only  re- 
cently referred  to  the  phrase,  "the  British 
spirit  of  fair  play,"  as  "the  cant  phrase  of 
the  day."1 

That  the  storms  of  the  present  war  ( 1914) 
are  throwing  up  whole  mountains  of  cant  on 
the  strand  of  the  literature  of  the  day  cannot 
in  the  least  be  wondered  at.  The  book  of  the 
six  Oxford  scholars  has  already  been  men- 
tioned. Even  as  earnest  and  able  a  weekly 
magazine  as  The  New  Statesman  (conducted 
by  Mr.  Sidney  Webb  and  Mrs.  Beatrice 
Webb-Potter)  published  on  October  24th  an 
extended  article  on  the  question:  "Why  did 
wo  embark  on  the  war?"  and  the  answer  was: 
"Because  of  Belgium  and  out  of  moral  rea- 
sons," whereupon  a  correspondent  (Mr.  Sad- 
ler) raised  objections  in  the  following  num- 
ber and  remarked:  "The  answer  savors  of 
hypocrisy." 

Of  course  it  does.     Cant  always  savors  of 

1  Lord  Cromer,  Essays,   p.   9. 


22  INTRODUCTION 

hypocrisy,  even  if  it  is  not  intended  to  be  utter, 
shameless  hypocrisy.  But  the  article  referred 
to  was  quite  right  in  declaring  that  Sir  Ed- 
ward Grey's  cant  concerning  the  breach  of 
Belgian  neutrality  and  England's  sacred  duty 
to  intervene  on  Belgium's  behalf  won  public 
opinion  for  the  war.  Public  opinion  in  Eng- 
land is  wonderfully  responsive  to  cant.  It  is 
like  a  musical  automat — one  needs  only  to 
throw  a  cant  phrase  into  the  slot  and  the  in- 
strument begins  to  grind  out  a  highly  moral 
melody. 

"In  the  political  literature  of  Europe  four 
qualities  are  ascribed  to  England.  It  is  as- 
serted that  England  is,  in  the  highest  questions 
of  public  policy,  fickle,  proud,  selfish  and 
quarrelsome."  x  Thus  declares  a  modern  Eng- 
lish author,  the  descendant  of  a  famous  family 
of  politicians.  He  ought  not  to  have  forgot- 
ten the  fifth  quality  which  rounds  out  the  char- 
acter drawing  of  England's  world  policy — the 
habitual  cant,  the  peculiar  spice  of  those  other 
qualities  so  aptly  described. 

A  single  sentiment  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all 
these  qualities.  It  is  fear — the  English  states- 
men call  it  foresight  and  watchfulness — the 
fear  of  thieves  or  beggars  that  forms  a  psy- 
che Honorable  George  Peel:  "The  Enemies  of  England," 
London,   1902,  pp.  8,  9. 


INTRODUCTION  23 

chological  weakness  of  many  rich  people,  the 
fear  of  being  outdone  by  competitors,  so  well 
known  to  every  business-man. 

But  are  our  judgments  not  determined  by 
partisanship?  Is  it  not  hostility  that  pictures 
English  policy  in  such  a  light?  Does  not  his- 
tory show  that  England  has  battled  for  justice 
and  freedom,  that,  with  the  bravery  of  a  lion, 
it  has  made  the  cause  of  the  small  and  weak 
states  of  the  earth  its  own  cause?  And  that, 
therefore,  its  world  policy  has  been  dictated 
by  ethical  motives? 

To  answer  these  questions  we  will  open  the 
books  of  history.  We  will  not  call  as  witnesses 
historians  who  might  possibly  be  open  to  sus- 
picion, we  will  not  call  foreign  historians,  who 
might  be  infected  with  the  hatred  against  po- 
litical England,  but  we  will  call  English  his- 
torians, and  by  preference  men  whose  authori- 
tativeness  is  not  denied  in  England,  men  who 
hold  the  first  rank  as  investigators  and  think- 
ers. 

In  line  with  this,  I  place  at  the  head  of  these 
witnesses  the  author  of  the  works  concerning 
"The  Expansion  of  England,"  and  "The 
Growth  of  British  Policy,"  Sir  J.  R.  Seeley. 
The  former  of  these  two  works  shall  serve  us 
as  the  basis  for  judging  the  motives  of  the  Eng- 
lish world  policy.     Seeley  was  knighted  for 


24  INTRODUCTION 

his  services  as  a  scholar  and  was  otherwise 
the  recipient  of  the  highest  distinctions. 

Not  that  Seeley  fought  against  the  foresee- 
ing militaristic  tendencies — popularly  termed 
Jingoism — of  the  last  decades.  Quite  the  con-1 
trary.  A  prominent  Swedish  historian  (Har- 
ald  Hjarne)  terms  him  "the  Herald  of  Im- 
perialism," and  thinks  that  he  can  be  consid- 
ered as  an  English  Treitschke.  His  authority 
in  his  own  land,  however,  is  much  higher  than 
is  the  authority  of  Treitschke  in  the  German 
countries.  Lord  Cromer,  "the  Egyptian,"  for 
instance,  calls  Seeley,  Gibbon,  Guizot, 
Mommsen  and  Milman  "the  most  able  writers 
and  thinkers  the  world  has  produced."  In  like 
manner  Joseph  Chamberlain,  in  one  of  his 
speeches  in  Parliament,  asserted  that  "our 
greatest  thinkers  and  writers  have  put  this 
problem  (of  Greater  Britain)  before  us,"  and 
named  as  such  Seeley,  Froude  and  Lecky. 

In  English  writings  ■ —  statements  by 
(Treitschke  are  cited  and  joined  in  absurd 
manner  with  quotations  from  Nietzsche  and 
LBernhardi  in  order  to  demonstrate  how  belli- 
cose (or  "chauvanistic"or  "militaristic")  the 
sentiment  of  the  Germans  is  to-day. 

It  is  not  in  this  sense  that  we  will  adduce 
statements  of  Seeley  and  other  distinguished 
authors.     The  sentiments  of  our  authorities 


INTRODUCTION  25 

are  matters  of  indifference  to  us.  It  is  only 
to  banish  the  suspicion  that  we  have  sought 
out  such  men  as  are  unfriendly  to  England  and 
its  policies  that  we  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  Seeley  is  an  imperialistic  historian.  The 
same  is  true  of  W.  H.  Lecky,  to  whom  we  have 
several  times  referred.  His  name  is  favorably 
known  in  the  United  States,  in  Germany,  in- 
deed, everywhere,  as  that  of  one  of  the  most 
learned  and  prominent  writers. 

A  somewhat  different  significance  attaches 
to  Justin  McCarthy,  who,  next  to  Seeley,  will 
be  most  frequently  called  as  a  witness.  This 
is  necessary  because  of  the  fact  that  for  the 
period  covered  by  the  reign  of  Queen  Vic- 
toria ( 1 837-1900)  there  is  no  other  work  that 
enjoys  such  great  popularity  and  such  regard 
in  England  as  the  "History  of  Our  Own 
Times, "with  its  three  divisions,  ( 1 )  up  to  1880, 
(2)  1880-1897,  (3)  1897-1900.  "Easily  and 
delightfully  written  and  on  the  whole  eminent- 
ly sane  and  moderate,  these  volumes  form  a 
brilliant  piece  of  narrative  from  a  Liberal 
standpoint."  This  is  the  characterization  of 
this  history  in  the  new  edition  of  the  Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica,  vol.  xvii,  p.  201. 

The  other  witnesses  speak  for  themselves. 
In  addition  to  historians  (in  whose  number 
are  reckoned  also  the  authors  of  works  on  cus- 


26  INTRODUCTION 


toms  of  living),  other  witnesses  will  occasion- 
ally be  called  for  the  better  characterization 
of  criticisms  that  deserve  to  be  made  better 
known,  either  because  of  their  general  circu- 
lation or  because  of  the  authoritative  standing 
of  the  critics. 

It  suffices  here  to  name  Richard  Price,  Her- 
bert Spencer,  Gladstone,  John  Morley  (Glad- 
stone's biographer),  John  Bright,  G.  M. 
Trevelyan  (Bright's  biographer),  Lord  Cro- 
mer, and  V.  S.  Blunt;  among  the  historians, 
James  Mill  (also  known  as  a  philosopher), 
Kaye,  Malleson,  G.  O.  Trevelyan  and  Hol- 
land Rose. 

All  these  authorities  are  ornaments  of  the 
English  nation  or  of  its  literature  and  schol- 
arship. 

Use  has  been  made  in  other  places  of  the 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography  and  the  last 
edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica.  The 
articles  cited  from  these  monumental  works 
are  from  the  pens  of  the  best  authorities  in 
their  subjects. 


PART    I 

THE    ENGLISH    WORLD    POLICY 

UP   TO   THE    FALL   OF 

NAPOLEON 

First  Division:  Wars  Against  Spain, 
Against  Holland,  and  Against  France, 
From  the  Sixteenth  to  the  Eighteenth 
Century 

CHAPTER   I 

THE    EXPANSION    OF    ENGLAND.      ELIZABETH, 
CROMWELL,  THE  RESTORATION.    BUCCANEERS 

"Between  the  Revolution  and  the  Battle  of 
Waterloo  it  may  be  reckoned  that  we  waged 
seven  great  wars,  of  which  the  shortest  lasted 
seven  years,  and  the  longest  about  twelve.  Out 
of  a  hundred  and  twenty-six  years,  sixty-four 
years,  or  more  than  half,  were  spent  in  war." 
( Seelcy,  p.  24.) 

Of  the  seven  wars  of  this  period,  "five  are 
wars  with   France  from  the  beginning,  and 

27 


28  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

both  the  other  two,  though  the  belligerent  at 
the  outset  was  in  the  first  Spain  and  in  the 
second  our  own  colonies,  yet  became  in  a 
short  time  and  ended  as  wars  with  France." 
(p.  28.) 

After  the  seven-year  pause  that  followed  the 
War  of  the  Spanish  Succession  the  following 
wars  can  almost  be  regarded  as  a  single  con- 
flict. "I  say  these  wars  make  one  grand  and 
decisive  struggle  between  England  and 
France."     (p.  31.) 

"The  expansion  of  England  in  the  New 
World  and  in  Asia  is  the  formula  which  sums 
up  for  England  the  history  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  .  .  .  The  great  triple  war  of  the 
middle  of  that  century  (1744-1763)  is  neither 
more  nor  less  than  the  great  decisive  duel  be- 
tween England  and  France  for  the  possession 
of  the  New  World."  (p.  33.)  "We  had  a 
competitor  in  the  work  of  settlement,  a  com- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  29 

petitor  who  in  some  respects  had  got  the  start 
of  us.  namely  France."    (p.  35.) 

"The  statement  that  expansion  is  the  chief 
character  of  English  history  in  the  eighteenth 
century  .  .  .  means  that  the  European  policy 
and  the  colonial  policy  are  but  different  as- 
pects of  the  same  great  national  development" 
(p.  42.) 

Seeley  also  occasionally  glances  backward 
to  the  history  of  the  time  preceding  this  pe- 
riod, to  the  British  ancien  regime. 

"It  seems  to  us  clear  that  we  are  the  great 
wandering,  working,  colonizing  race,  descend- 
ed from  sea-rovers  and  Vikings.  The  sea,  we 
think,  is  ours  by  nature's  decree,  and  on  this 
highway  we  travel  to  subdue  the  earth  and  to 
people  it"  (p.  94.)  In  reality,  "the  mari- 
time greatness  of  England  is  of  much  more 
modern  growth  than  most  of  us  imagine.  It 
dati_>  from  the  civil  wars  of  the  seventeenth 


30  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

century  and  from  the  career  of  Robert  Blake." 

(P-9S-) 
"There  are  no  doubt  naval  heroes  older 

than  Blake.     There  is  Francis  Drake  and 
Richard  Grenville  and  John  Hawkins.     But 
the  navy  of  Elizabeth  was  only  the  English 
navy  in  infancy,  and  the  heroes  themselves  are 
not  far  removed  from  buccaneers."    (p.  96.) 

"From  this  point  of  view  from  which  we 
here  regard  English  history,  the  great  occur- 
rence of  the  seventeenth  century  before  1688 
is  not  the  Civil  War  or  the  execution  of  the 
King,  but  the  intervention  of  Cromwell  in  the 
European  War.  This  act  may  almost  be  re- 
garded as  the  foundation  of  the  English 
World  Empire."  (p.  130.)  The  first  Stuarts 
directed  their  gaze  more  upon  the  Old  World 
than  upon  the  New.  "But  the  reaction  comes 
to  an  end  with  the  accession  to  power  of  the 
party  of  the  Commonwealth.    A  policy  now 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  31 

begins  which  is  not,  to  be  sure,  very  scrupu- 
lous, but  is  able,  resolute  and  successful.  It  is 
oceanic  and  looks  westward,  like  the  policy  of 
the  latter  years  of  Elizabeth."  (p.  131.)  The 
colonial  policy  of  Cromwell  is  chiefly  in- 
teresting because  Charles  II  was  guided  by 
it  in  the  direction  of  his  own  course. 
"Moral  rectitude  is  hardly  a  characteristic  of 
it,  and  if  it  is  religious,  this  perhaps  would 
have  appeared,  had  the  protectorate  lasted 
longer,  to  have  been  its  most  dangerous  fea- 
ture. Nothing  is  more  dangerous  than  im- 
perialism marching  with  an  idea  on  its  ban- 
ner, and  Protestantism  was  to  our  Emperor 
Oliver  what  the  ideas  of  the  Revolution  were 
to  Napoleon  and  his  nephew."  (p.  133.)  "We 
may  well,  I  think,  shudder  at  the  thought  of 
the  danger  which  was  removed  by  the  fall  of 
the  protectorate."     (p.  134.) 

This  imperialist  policy  developed  princi- 


32  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

pally  in  regard  to  the  New  World.  "Here, 
indeed,  Cromwell's  policy  .  .  .  has  a  peculi- 
arly absolute  and  unscrupulous  tinge.  Of  his 
own  pure  will,  without  consulting  directly 
or  indirectly  the  people,  and  in  spite  of  oppo- 
sition in  his  council,  he  plunges  the  country 
into  a  war  with  Spain.  This  war  is  com- 
menced after  the  manner  of  the  old  Elizabeth- 
an by  a  sudden  descent,  without  previous  quar- 
rel or  declaration  of  war,  upon  San  Domin- 
go." (p.  134.)  Sir  J.  Stephen  once  told  his 
auditors  that  "if  they  had  a  taste  for  icono- 
clasm  he  could  recommend  them  to  employ 
it  upon  the  buccaneering  Cromwell."  (ibid.) 
It  was  not,  however,  the  war  with  Spain  that 
was  most  characteristic  of  this  period  and  the 
period  following,  but  the  war  with  Holland. 
"If  Cromwell's  breach  with  Spain  shows  most 
strikingly  by  its  violent  suddenness  the  spirit 
of  the  new  commercial  policy,  yet  it  is  capable 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  33 

of  being  misinterpreted."  (p.  135.)  It  might 
be  thought  it  had  been  directed  against  Spain 
as  the  great  Catholic  power.  "It  is  the  great 
proof  that  this  cause  is  fast  giving  way  to  the 
other,  viz.,  the  great  trade-rivalry  produced 
by  the  New  World,  that  all  through  the  mid- 
dle of  the  seventeenth  century  England  and 
Holland  wage  great  naval  wars  of  a  character 
such  as  had  never  been  seen  before."  (ibid.) 
Charles  II  is  often  condemned  for  the 
boundless  unprincipledness  of  his  foreign 
policy.  In  reality,  however,  he  was  only  fol- 
lowing the  examples  set  by  the  Republic  and 
by  Cromwell.  Because  of  this  his  Govern- 
ment was  supported  by  some  people  who  had 
inherited  the  traditions  of  the  Republic.  "An- 
thony Ashley  Cooper,  a  man  of  Cromwellian 
ideas,  supported  it  by  quoting  the  old  words, 
dclenda  est  Carthago.  In  other  words:  'Hol- 
land is  our  great  rival  in  trade,  on  the  ocean 


34  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 


and  in  the  New  World.  Let  us  destroy  her, 
though  she  be  a  Protestant  power;  let  us  de- 
stroy her  with  the  help  of  a  Catholic  power.'  " 
(p.  136.)  "Those  were  the  maxims  of  the 
Commonwealth  and  of  the  Protector,  who, 
though  Puritans,  had  understood  that  the  riv- 
alry of  the  maritime  powers  for  trade  and  em- 
pire in  the  New  World  was  taking  the  place  of 
the  struggle  of  the  churches  as  the  question  of 
the  day."     (ibid.) 

The  result  was  conquest.  Thus,  under 
Cromwell,  Jamaica  was  won  from  Spain,  and 
Bombay  was  taken  from  Portugal  and  New 
York  from  Holland  under  Charles. 

One  sees  that  this  historian,  who  does  not 
conceal  his  enthusiasm  for  a  "Greater  Bri- 
tain" (as  much  as  he  endeavors  to  judge  ob- 
jectively), ascribes  the  foundation  of  the  em- 
pire  to   men   whom    he   describes    as   "buc- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  35 

caneers."  This  comparison  does  not  appear 
here  for  the  first  time.  Thus,  for  instance,  in 
a  booklet1  written  in  1837,  glorifying  voyages 
of  exploration,  appears  this  passage:  "Al- 
though the  name  (buccaneers),  linked  to  one 
virtue  and  a  thousand  crimes,  is  of  much  later 
date  than  the  era  of  Drake  and  his  daring  fol- 
lower Oxenham,  yet  is  there  no  violation  of 
truth  in  ascribing  to  them  the  character  which 
it  signified,  of  indiscriminate  plunder  by  sea 
and  land,  in  peace  and  in  war." 

The  real  buccaneers,  "a  designation  too  soon 
stained  with  every  species  of  crime  and  ex- 
cess," belong  to  the  seventeenth  century.  They 
are  also  known  under  the  name  of  ^filibus- 
ters/' and  called  themselves  "brothers  of  the 
coast." 

The  conduct  of  English  warships  towards 

'"Lives  and  Voyages  of  Drake,  Cavendish  and  Dampier, 
Including  a  View  of  the  History  of  the  Buccaneers,"  London, 
1837,    p.    183. 


36  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

neutral  trading  vessels,  from  that  day  to  the 
present  time,  has  successfully  carried  on  the 
traditions  of  the  "brothers  of  the  coast."  An 
admission  of  this,  even  though  not  in  so  many 
words,  is  to  be  found  in  Seeley's  writings. 

This  rule  of  conduct  led  to  war  with  Den- 
mark in  1800,  to  war  with  the  United  States 
in  1812  and  to  a  sharp  conflict  with  the  same 
country  in  1841.  The  English  policy  has  thus 
far  held  it  incompatible  with  its  interests  to 
respect  private  property  in  time  of  war. 


CHAPTER  II 

COMMERCE  AXD  WAR.   THE  ETHICAL  MOTIVES 

More  and  more,  then,  the  expeditions  of  the 
freebooters  were  succeeded  by  naval  warfare; 
at  first  the  war  against  Holland,  then  the 
great  contest  with  France  for  the  New  World. 
The  climax  of  Seeley's  descriptions  is  the 
emphasizing  of  the  significance  of  the  latter 
contest.  He  considered  it  as  affording  a  clear- 
ly visible  example  of  the  fact  "that  the  expan- 
sion of  England  has  been  neither  a  tranquil 
process  nor  yet  belonging  purely  to  the  most 
recent  times;  that  throughout  the  eighteenth 
century  that  expansion  was  an  active  principle 
of  disturbance,  a  cause  of  wars  unparalleled 
both  in  magnitude  and  number."    (p.  125.) 

Of  what  sort  were  the  causes  and  the  motives 

37 


38  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

of  these  wars?  Let  us  hear  the  answer  of  the 
philosophic  historian  to  this  question. 

"It  seems  to  me  to  be  the  principal  charac- 
teristic of  this  phase  of  England  that  she  is  at 
once  commercial  and  warlike."     (p.  127.) 

"The  wars  of  the  eighteenth  century  were 
incomparably  greater  and  more  burdensome 
than  those  of  the  Middle  Ages.  In  a  lesser 
degree  those  of  the  seventeenth  century  were 
also  great.  These  are  precisely  the  centuries 
in  which  England  grew  more  and  more  a  com- 
mercial country.  England  indeed  grew  ever 
more  warlike  at  that  time  as  she  grew  more 
commercial.  And  it  is  not  difficult  to  show 
that  a  cause  was  at  work  to  make  war  and  com- 
merce increase  together.  This  cause  is  the  old 
colonial  system"  (p.  128),  the  essential  feature 
of  which  is  "that  it  placed  the  colony  in  the 
position,  not  so  much  of  a  state  in  federation, 
as  of  a  conquered  state."     (p.  77.)     "Com- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  39 

merce  in  itself  may  favor  peace,  but  when 
commerce  is  artificially  shut  out  by  a  decree 
of  government  from  some  promising  territory, 
then  commerce  just  as  naturally  favors  war. 
We  know  this  by  our  own  recent  experience 
with  China."1  (p.  128.)  The  old  colonial 
system  "carved  out  the  New  World  into  terri- 
tories, which  were  regarded  as  estates,  to  be 
enjoyed  in  each  case  by  the  colonizing  nation. 
The  hope  of  obtaining  such  splendid  estates 
and  of  enjoying  the  profits  that  were  reaped 
from  them  constituted  the  greatest  stimulus 
to  commerce  that  had  ever  been  known,  and 
it  was  a  stimulus  which  acted  without  inter- 
mission for  centuries.  .  .  .  But  inseparable 
from  the  commercial  stimulus  was  the  stimu- 
lus of  international  rivalry.  The  object  of 
each  nation  was  now  to  increase  its  trade,  not 


'This,  of  course,   refers  to  the  Opium  War,  and  the  troubles 
that  followed  it.     (See  Chap.  X.) 


4o  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

by  waiting  upon  the  wants  of  mankind,  but  by 
a  wholly  different  method,  namely,  by  getting 
exclusive  possession  of  some  rich  tract  in  the 
New  World.  Now  whatever  may  be  the  natu- 
ral opposition  between  the  spirit  of  trade  and 
the  spirit  of  war,  trade  pursued  in  this  method 
is  almost  identical  with  war,  and  can  hardly 
fail  to  lead  to  war.  What  is  conquest  but  ap- 
propriation of  territory?  Now  appropriation 
of  territory  under  the  old  colonial  system  be- 
came the  first  national  object.  The  five  na- 
tions of  the  West  were  launched  into  an  eager 
competition  for  territory — that  is,  they  were 
put  into  a  relation  with  each  other  in  which 
the  pursuit  of  wealth  naturally  led  to  quarrels, 
a  relation  in  which,  as  I  said,  commerce  and 
war  were  inseparably  entangled  together,  so 
that  commerce  led  to  war  and  war  fostered 
commerce.  The  character  of  the  new  period 
which  was  thus  opened  showed   itself  very 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  41. 

early.  Consider  the  nature  of  that  long,  desul- 
tory war  of  England  with  Spain,  of  which  the 
expedition  of  the  Armada  was  the  most  strik- 
ing incident  I  have  said  that  the  English  sea 
captains  were  very  like  buccaneers,  and  indeed 
to  England  the  war  was  throughout  an  indus- 
try, a  way  to  wealth,  the  most  thriving  busi- 
ness, the  most  profitable  investment,  of  the 
time.  That  Spanish  war  is,  in  fact,  the  infancy 
of  English  foreign  trade.  The  first  generation 
of  Englishmen  that  invested  capital,  put  it 
into  that  war.  As  now  we  put  our  money  into 
railways,  or  what  not,  so  then  the  keen  men 
of  business  took  shares  in  the  new  ship  which 
John  Oxenham  or  Francis  Drake  was  fitting 
out  at  Plymouth  and  which  was  intended  to 
lie  in  wait  for  the  treasure  galleons,  or  make 
raids  upon  the  Spanish  towns  upon  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico.  And  yet  the  two  countries  were 
formally  not  even  at  war  with  each  other.    It 


42  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

was  thus  that  the  system  of  monopoly  in  the 
New  World  made  trade  and  war  indistin- 
guishable from  each  other.  The  prosperity  of 
Holland  was  the  next  and  a  still  more  startling 
illustration  of  the  same  law.  What  more  ruin- 
ous, you  say,  than  a  long  war,  especially  to  a 
small  state?  And  yet  Holland  made  her  for- 
tune in  the  world  by  a  war  of  some  eighty  years 
with  Spain.  How  was  this?  It  was  because 
war  threw  open  to  her  attack  the  whole  bound- 
less possessions  of  her  antagonist  in  the  New 
World,  which  would  have  been  closed  to  her 
in  peace.  By  conquest  she  made  for  herself 
an  empire,  and  this  empire  made  her  rich." 
(pp.  128-130.) 

England  followed  in  Holland's  footsteps. 
The  alliance  followed  the  war  against  Hol- 
land. Both  states  made  common  cause  against 
the  newly  developing  colonial  power  of 
France.     Colbert's  ministry  meant  the  delib- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  43 


erate  entrance  of  France  into  the  competition 
of  the  western  states  for  the  New  World.  The 
union  of  the  two  sea  powers,  which  made  Wil- 
liam of  Orange  King  of  England,  was  appar- 
ently dictated  by  the  common  Protestant  in- 
terests as  opposed  to  the  Catholic  reaction 
which  had  reached  its  climax  in  the  revocation 
of  the  Edict  of  Nantes.  This  motive  also 
made  itself  felt  directly  at  the  very  outset.  A 
backward  glance  at  the  events  culminating  in 
the  Peace  of  Utrecht  (171 3)  furnishes  the  cor- 
rect point  of  view  of  the  more  powerful  and 
deeper  lying  motives,  for  in  the  draft  of  this 
treaty  of  peace  the  Spanish  War  of  Succession 
betrays  "its  intensely  commercial  character." 
(p.  151.) 

"In  reality  it  is  the  most  businesslike  of  all 
our  wars,  and  it  was  waged  in  the  interest  of 
English  anil  Dutch  merchants  whose  trade  and 
livelihood  were  at  stake."     (p.   152.)     The 


44  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 


threatened  union  of  the  Spanish  Empire  witli 
France  would  have  closed  nearly  the  whole 
New  World  to  England  and  Holland.  The 
French  began  to  explore  the  Mississippi  and 
to  make  settlements.  "Behind  all  the  courtly 
foppery  of  the  grand  siecle,  commercial  con- 
siderations now  ruled  the  world  as  they  had 
never  ruled  it  before,  and  as  they  continued 
to  rule  it  through  much  of  the  prosaic  cen- 
tury that  was  then  opening."  (p.  152.)  The 
Peace  of  Utrecht  denotes  one  of  the  greatest 
epochs  in  the  history  of  England's  expansion. 
England  was  now  the  greatest  state  in  the 
world,  and  remained  for  many  years  without 
a  rival.  Holland's  decline  became  notice- 
able. France  wa9  lamed  for  a  time.  Eng- 
land's actual  gain  was,  in  addition  to  Gibral- 
tar, Minorca,  New  Scotland  and  Newfound- 
land, and  the  notorious  Assiento,  that  treaty 
of  state  which  conferred  upon  the  English 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  45 


merchant  a  monopoly  of  the  slave  trade  in 
Spanish  America.  England's  colonial  empire 
was,  in  extent,  unimportant  in  comparison 
with  that  of  France,  and  even  with  that  of 
Portugal.  France  was  also  superior  in  many 
respects.  Her  colonial  policy  appeared  to  be 
more  successful.  England's  rivalry  now  di- 
rects itself  against  Spain  and  France,  but 
chiefly  against  France,  England's  neighbor  in 
America  and  India. 

The  decisive  event  in  the  great  duel  be- 
tween England  and  France  is  the  Seven 
Years'  War,  and  the  new  attitude  which  Eng- 
land assumes  as  a  consequence  of  the  Paris 
Peace  of  1762.  "Here  is  the  culminating 
point  of  English  power  in  the  eighteenth 
century;  nay,  relatively  to  other  states,  Eng- 
land has  never  since  been  so  great."  (p. 
[60.)  "Id  this  culminating  phase  England 
becomes  an  object  of  jealousy  and  dread  to  all 


46  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

Europe,  as  Spain  and  afterwards  France  had 
been  in  the  seventeenth  century."     (p.  161.) 

We  have  seen  that  this  culminating  point 
had  been  reached  by  a  long  series  of  wars.  All 
these  were  wars  of  aggression.  No  matter  of 
what  nature  the  pretexts  or  the  immediate  ex- 
ternal causes  which  led  England  to  carry  on 
these  wars,  no  matter  how  these  pretexts  and 
causes  differed  one  from  the  other,  they  are 
all  of  the  same  nature — commercial  interests, 
desire  for  commercial  gain,  commercial  jeal- 
ousy, envy  and  mistrust  of  competitors. 

This  is  shown  us  by  the  dispassionate  judg- 
ment of  Sir.  J.  R.  Seeley,  which  assuredly  is 
not  colored  to  the  disadvantage  of  his  own 
fatherland.  On  the  whole,  he  refrains  from 
proposing  moral  judgments.  He  seeks  not  to 
praise  or  to  judge,  but  to  comprehend.  Since, 
however,  he  speaks  continually  of  England's 
power  and  greatness,  he  expressly  asserts  that 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  47 

it  is  no  part  of  his  intention  "either  to  glorify 
the  conquests  made,  or  to  justify  the  means 
adopted  by  our  countrymen."  (p.  155.)  He 
shows  how  England  defeated  her  four  rivals 
in  the  contest  for  the  New  World,  but  he  has 
not  the  smallest  intention  of  claiming  for  Eng- 
land superior  ability  or  bravery  because  of 
these  victories.  He  does  not  wish  to  encour- 
age his  readers  to  admire  Drake  or  Hawkins, 
the  Republic  under  Cromwell,  or  even  the 
government  of  Charles  II.  "Indeed,  it  is  not 
easy  to  approve  the  conduct  of  those  who  built 
up  Greater  Britain,  though  there  is  plenty  to 
admire  in  their  achievements,  and  much  less 
certainly  to  blame  or  to  shudder  at  than  in 
the  deeds  of  the  Spanish  adventurers."  (p. 
156.)  He  considers  the  matter  "in  order  to 
discover  the  laws  by  which  States  rise,  expand 
and  prosper  or  fall  in  this  world."  (ibid.)  He 
desires  also  to  throw  light  upon  the  question 


48  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

of  whether  the  Greater  Britain,  now  that  it 
exists,  is  likely  to  continue  to  flourish  and  en- 
dure or  fall  into  decay.  "Perhaps  you  may 
ask  (the  teacher  is  addressing  his  students) 
whether  we  can  expect  or  wish  it  to  prosper,  if 
crime  has  gone  to  the  making  of  it."  (ibid.) 
But  God,  he  says,  as  He  has  revealed  Him- 
self in  history,  does  not  usually  judge  in  this 
way.  Out  of  illegal  acquisitions  of  territory 
by  a  state  does  not  arise  the  probability  that 
such  territory  will  again  be  lost."  If  we  com- 
pare the  British  Empire  with  other  empires  in 
respect  of  its  origin,  we  shall  see  that  it  has 
arisen  in  the  same  way;  that  its  founders  have 
had  the  same  motives,  and  these  not  mainly 
noble;  that  they  have  displayed  much  fierce 
covetousness,  mixed  with  heroism;  that  they 
have  not  been  much  troubled  by  moral  scru- 
ples, at  least  in  their  dealings  with  enemies  and 
rivals,  though  they  have  often  displayed  vir- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  49 


tuous  self-denial  in  their  dealings  among 
themselves."  (p.  157.)  He  believes  that,  in 
comparison  with  other  empires,  a  good  rather 
than  a  bad  testimonial  can  be  given  the  Eng- 
lish ;  the  Spanish,  especially,  are  incomparably 
more  stained  with  cruelty  and  covetousness. 
One  finds  noble  traits  also  in  the  history  of  the 
British  Conquistadores.  "Their  crimes,  on  the 
other  hand,  are  such  as  have  been  almost  uni- 
versal in  colonization."    (p.  157.) 

It  is  probable  that  the  Spaniards,  French 
and  Dutch  will  reach  a  somewhat  different 
conclusion  as  the  result  of  a  consideration  of 
these  mutual  crimes. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  GLORIES  OF  PITT,  THE  ELDER.      TRIUMPH 

OVER   FRANCE 

At  this  period  the  elder  Pitt,  since  1766 
Earl  of  Chatham,  had  reached  the  height  of 
success  and  influence,  albeit  the  popularity 
consequent  thereon  did  not  survive  his  eleva- 
tion to  the  peerage.  He  had  carried  through 
the  war  against  France,  against  continuous  and 
powerful  opposition  and  despite  initial  fail- 
ures in  America  and  in  Germany,  where  he 
had  the  most  gifted  military  leader  of  the  age 
(Frederick  the  Great)  fighting  for  him.  His 
declaration  that  he  would  conquer  America 
in  Germany,  is  generally  known.  "Not  con- 
tent therefore,  to  have  almost  annihilated  the 
fleets  of  France,  he  desired  to  deprive  her  of 

50 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  51 

all  her  colonial  empire,  and  also  of  all  partici- 
pation in  that  Newfoundland  fishery  which 
he  described  as  the  great  nursery  of  her  sailors. 
Some  time  ago  he  (Pitt)  said  in  the  midst  of 
his  triumphs:  'I  would  have  been  content  to 
bring  France  to  her  knees;  now  I  will  not  rest 
till  I  have  laid  her  on  her  back.'  He  once  con- 
fessed, with  a  startling  frankness,  that  he  loved 
'an  honorable  war.'  He  never  appears  to  have 
had  any  adequate  sense  of  the  misery  it  pro- 
duces." 1 

Lecky  emphasizes  the  fact  that  Pitt,  in  his 
love  of  war,  was  in  full  accord  with  the  wishes 
of  his  people.  He  had  made  it  his  aim  to  con- 
sider patriotism  as  signifying  an  increase  of 
power  as  opposed  to  "the  inevitable  and  natu- 
ral enemy"  (France),  and  the  putting  of  an 
end  t<>  the  weakness,  anarchy  and  corruption  of 

which,  according  to  his  opinion,  recent  Eng- 
1 Lccky,  "A  History  <>f  thi  <-nth  Century,"  II,  p.  512. 


52  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

lish  politics  was  full.  "He  considered  the 
selfishness,  incapacity,  intrigues  and  jealousies 
of  the  great  nobles  as  being  the  main  cause  of 
those  evils."  x  To  crown  his  fatherland  with 
the  glory  of  war  was  his  aim  and  his  accomp- 
lishment. With  complete  deliberation  he 
made  his  policy  serve  the  interests  of  trade, 
"British  policy  is  British  trade,"  was  his 
motto. 

1Lecky,  III,  p.  in.  After  the  fall  of  Pitt  his  successor,  Lord 
Bute,  left  Prussia  in  the  lurch  (1762).  Pitt  characterized  this 
as  deceitful,  dishonest  and  treacherous.  Bute  and  his  King  at 
the  same  time  offered  East  Prussia  to  the  Tsarina  and  Silesia 
to  the  Kaiserin  as  the  price  of  peace.  J.  R.  Green  calls  this 
"shameless  indifference  toward  our  national  honor,"  and  de- 
clares that  only  by  fortunate  accidents  was  England  preserved 
from  this  debasement.     ("Short  History,"  p.  743.) 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  LOSS  OF  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  COLONIES 

The  splendid  and  victorious  development 
of  the  British  colonial  empire  in  the  eight- 
eenth century  did  not,  however,  proceed  with- 
out interruption.  There  came  a  setback,  a  sud- 
den convulsion,  whose  far-reaching  conse- 
quences were  not  comprehended  when  it  oc- 
curred— the  loss  of  the  American  colonies, 
which  constituted  nearly  the  entire  colonial 
empire  at  that  time.  "Like  a  bubble,  Greater 
Britain  expanded  rapidly  and  then  burst.  It 
has  since  been  expanding  again.  Can  we  avoid 
the  obvious  inference?"     (Seeley,  p.  176.) 

Seeley  rejects  this  deduction,  for  the  reason 

that  the  old  colonial  system,  which  treated  a 

colony  as  a  slave,  was   responsible  for  the 

53 


54  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

American  Revolution.  No  new,  well  thought 
out  system  has  as  yet  taken  its  place,  accord- 
ing to  Seeley.  He  declares  the  only  correct 
system  to  be  one  which  makes  the  colonies 
parts  of  England,  as  opposed  to  the  former 
method  of  considering  them  possessions  of 
England  and  treating  them  as  such. 

In  the  words  of  Edmund  Burke  (in  his  fa- 
mous speech  concerning  American  taxation, 
on  April  19,  1774),  the  colonial  policy  was 
from  the  beginning  exclusively  commercial, 
and  the  commercial  system  was  the  system  of 
a  monopoly.  "No  trade  was  let  loose  from 
that  constraint  but  merely  to  enable  the  colo- 
nists to  dispose  of  what,  in  the  course  of  your 
trade,  you  could  not  take,  or  to  enable  them 
to  dispose  of  such  articles  as  are  forced  upon 
them,  and  for  which,  without  some  degree  of 
liberty,  they  could  not  pay.  .  .  .  This  princi- 
ple of  commercial  monopoly  runs  through  no 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  55 

less  than  twenty-nine  Acts  of  Parliament  from 
the  year  1660  to  the  unfortunate  period  of 
1 764."  Burke  terms  America's  condition  dur- 
ing this  period  one  of  civil  liberty  and  com- 
mercial servitude. 

At  the  same  time  Richard  Price  wrote  his 
"Observations  on  the  nature  of  civil  liberty, 
the  principles  of  government,  and  the  justice 
and  policy  of  the  war  with  America."  (7th 
ed.,  London,  1776.)  The  booklet  went  into 
many  editions,  was  translated  into  nearly  all 
European  languages,  and  evoked  more  than 
sixty  replies.  It  is  a  flaming  arraignment  of 
the  English  world  policy  of  that  period. 

"The  disgrace  to  which  a  kingdom  must  sub- 
mit by  making  concessions  is  nothing  to  that 
of  being  the  aggressor  in  an  unrighteous 
quarrel. 

"The  quarrel  with  America  is  disgraceful 
to  us  because  inconsistent  with  our  feeling  in 


56  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

similar  cases.  .  .  .  This  war  is  disgraceful  on 
account  of  the  persuasion  which  led  to  it,  and 
under  which  it  has  been  undertaken:  the  gen- 
eral cry  was  last  winter  that  the  people  of  New 
England  were  a  body  of  cowards,  who  could 
at  once  be  reduced  to  submission  by  a  hostile 
look  from  our  troops.  .  .  .  The  manner  in 
which  this  war  has  been  hitherto  conducted 
renders  it  still  more  disgraceful.  English 
valor  being  thought  insufficient  to  subdue  the 
colonies,  the  laws  and  religion  of  France  were 
established  in  Canada  on  purpose  to  obtain  the 
power  of  bringing  upon  them  from  thence  an 
army  of  French  Papists.  The  wild  Indians 
and  their  own  slaves  have  been  instigated  to 
attack  them,  and  attempts  have  been  made  to 
gain  the  assistance  of  a  large  body  of  Russians. 
With  like  views  German  troops  have  been 
hired;  and  the  defence  of  our  forts  and  gar- 
risons trusted  in  their  hands." 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  57 


The  modern  English  historians,  in  complete 
accord  with  Price,  depict  the  traffic  in  sol- 
diers, which  has  been  rightly  regarded  as  the 
disgrace  of  German  princes,  as  a  disgrace 
which  fell  in  no  less  degree  upon  Great  Britain 
and  strongly  embittered  the  feelings  of  the 
colonists.1 

1  Lecky:  "A  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury," ch.  12.  Sir  G.  O.  Trevelyan:  "The  American  Revolu- 
tion," Part  II,  vol.   i,  pp.   34-56. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    SLAVE    TRADE    AS    THE    PILLAR    OF    THE 

EMPIRE 

Seeley  deals  with  the  slave  trade  in  connec- 
tion with  his  consideration  of  the  "crimes" 
with  which  the  English  colonial  empire  (like 
the  Spanish  and  other  colonial  empires)  was 
built  up.  He  calls  it  "the  greatest  of  these 
crimes."  "England  had  taken  some  share  in 
the  slave  trade  as  early  as  Elizabeth's  age, 
when  John  Hawkins  distinguished  himself  as 
the  first  Englishman  who  stained  his  hands 
with  its  atrocity.  You  will  find  in  Hakluyt * 
his  own  narrative,  how  he  came  in  1567  upon 
an  African  town,  of  which  the  huts  were  cov- 

1  "Hakluyt:  The  Principal  Navigations,  Voyages,  Traffiques 
and  Discoveries  of  the  English  Nation,  Made  by  Sea  or  on 
Land,"   London,    1598;    2   vols. 

58 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  59 

ered  with  dry  palm  leaves,  how  he  set  fire  to  it, 
and  out  of  '8,000  inhabitants  succeeded  in  seiz- 
ing 250  persons,  men,  women  and  children.'  " 
(p.  158.)  .  .  .  "Like  our  colonial  empire  it- 
self, our  participation  in  the  slave  trade  was 
the  gradual  growth  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. By  the  Treaty  of  Utrecht  it  was,  as  it 
were,  established,  and  became  'a  central  object 
of  English  policy'.1  From  this  date  I  am 
afraid  ave  took  the  leading  share,  and  stained 
ourselves  beyond  other  nations  in  the  mon- 
strous and  enormous  atrocities  of  the  slave 
trade/'  (ib.)  This  sin  was  somewhat  miti- 
gated by  the  fact  "that  we  published  our  own 
guilt,  repented  of  it,  and  did  at  last  renounce 
it."  (p.  159.)  On  the  whole,  however,  this 
epoch  (the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century) 
secularized  and  materialized  the  English  peo- 

1  The  phrase  is  borrowed  from  Lecky.     See  'History  of  Eng- 
land in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  II,  p.   13. 


60  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

pie  as  nothing  had  done  before,  not  even  the 
period  of  the  frivolous  Kingof  the  Restoration 
Charles  II ;  never  had  "sordid  motives"  occu- 
pied such  high  place.  (Seeley  is  referring  to 
the  period  up  to  1883.) 

Indeed,  the  conclusion  is  inescapable  that 
the  effect  which  the  slave  trade — which  was 
ever  united  with  slave  hunting  and  slave  steal- 
ing— had  upon  the  moral  qualities  of  that  part 
of  the  well-to-do  citizens  of  the  English  nation 
enriched  thereby  could  not  have  been  exactly 
favorable;  and  if  in  this  land,  in  greater  de- 
gree and  earlier  than  in  other  countries,  com- 
plaints of  humanitarians  and  philosophers 
against  the  brutalities  of  the  possessing  classes 
grew  loud,  one  must,  in  order  to  understand 
the  basis  for  such  complaints,  recall  the  man- 
ner in  which  these  classes  obtained  a  great 
part  of  their  wealth. 

In  the  year  1750  Parliament  enacted  a  law 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  61 

against  the  kidnapping  of  negro  children,  but 
it  exhibited  itself  as  "quite  ineffective." 
Twenty  years  later  the  elder  Pitt  (the  Earl  of 
Chatham)  boasted  that  it  was  due  to  his  con- 
quests in  Africa  during  the  Seven  Years'  War 
that  almost  the  entire  slave  trade  had  come 
into  British  hands.  And  the  great  majority 
looked  upon  this  trade  as  upon  a  "pillanof  the 
Empire  and  derided  its  few  opponents  as  luna- 
tics." " 

1Rose:  'Tift  and  the  National  Revival,"  London,  1912,  p. 
455.  The  harbor  of  Liverpool  owes  its  rise  chiefly  to  the 
slave  trade,  for  of  all  businesses  which  had  their  seat  there, 
this  business  was  "by  far  the  most  lucrative."  "It  has  been 
computed  that  in  the  decade  1783-1793  Liverpool's  slave- 
ships  made  87S  round  voyages  (i.  e.,  from  Liverpool  to  the 
Guinea  Coast,  thence  to  the  West  Indies,  and  back  to  the 
Mersey),  carried  303,737  slaves  and  sold  them  for  £15,186,850" 
(nearly  $76,000,000).  In  view  of  this  it  can  be  realized  what 
indignation  v.  as  aroused  by  the  idea  of  forbidding  this  trade. 
■  I,  though  it  had  only  eighteen  ships  in  the  trade,  was 
ftlso  op  in  arms,  for  it  depended  largely  on  the  refining  of 
IX  and  the  manufacture  of  ruin.  .  .  .  Persona  of  a  rhetorical 
turn  depicted  in  lurid  colors  the  decay  of  Britain's  mercantile 
marine,  the  decline  of  her  wealth  and  the  miseries  of  1  sugar 
famine."      (Rose,  p.  463.) 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  INDIA 

As  to  the  conquest  of  India  let  us  hear  first 
the  philosopher,  James  Mill,  author  of  the 
first  great  history  of  India,  himself  an  official 
of  the  company  that  carried  out  the  greatest 
part  of  this  conquest.  He  says:  "The  two 
important  discoveries  for  conquering  India 
were,  first,  the  weakness  of  the  native  armies 
against  European  discipline;  secondly,  the 
facility  of  imparting  that  discipline  to  the  na- 
tives in  the  European  service.  .  .  .  Both  dis- 
coveries were  made  by  the  French."  Seeley, 
who  quotes  this  passage  (p.  233),  adds  that  it 
is  utterly  incorrect  to  talk  of  the  English  nation 
as  having  "conquered"  the  nations  of  India. 
They  were  subjugated  by  an  army  of  which 

62 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  63 

only  the  fifth  part  consisted  of  Englishmen. 
The  other  four-fifths  were  composed  of  the 
natives.  One  can  thus  rather  say  that  India 
conquered  itself.  In  reality  there  never  was 
a  national  state  of  India.  In  reality,  too,  what 
took  place  was  not  so  much  a  conquest  as  an 
internal  revolution,  the  result  of  battles  de- 
signed to  set  a  limit  to  anarchy.  The  talisman 
which  enabled  the  East  India  Company  to 
put  an  end  to  the  empire  of  the  Grand  Mogul 
"was  not  some  incommunicable  physical  or 
moral  superiority,  as  we  love  to  imagine,  but 
a  superior  discipline  and  military  system, 
which  could  be  communicated  to  the  natives 
of  India."     (p.  245.) 

Whether  or  not  it  can  be  called  conquest, 
certain  it  is  that  naked  might — "blood  and 
iron" — was  what  first  enabled  the  East  India 
Company  and  then  the  British  state  to  acquire 
dominion    over    the    greater    part   of    India 


64  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

proper.  The  leaders  in  the  decisive  conflicts 
were  two  men  who  distinguished  themselves 
through  strong  willpower  and  no  small  intel- 
ligence— Lord  Clive  and  Warren  Hastings. 

Clive  (1725-1774)  is  described  in  the  last 
edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  (Cam- 
bridge, 1910)  as  "the  first  of  a  century's  bril- 
liant succession  of  those  'soldier-politicals,'  as 
they  are  called  in  the  East,  to  whom  Great 
Britain  owes  the  conquest  and  consolidation  of 
its  greatest  dependency."  * 

After  his  definite  return  to  England,  the 
House  of  Commons  adopted  a  resolution 
(with  155  votes  against  95),  declaring  that 
Lord  Clive  "obtained  and  possessed  himself 
of  £230,000  during  his  first  administration 
of  Bengal";  following  this,  however,  a  reso- 
lution was  passed  unanimously,  giving  rec- 
ognition to  his  great  services  in  connection 

1  Encyc.  Brit.,  xi  ed.,  Clive. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  65 

with  that  country.  The  case  of  Omichund 
was  not  referred  to. 

Omichund  was  a  treasonable  Hindu  who 
was  grossly  defrauded  by  Lord  Clive  by  means 
of  a  forgery,  and  who,  as  a  result,  became  mad. 
The  author  of  Clive's  biography  in  the  En- 
cyclopedia calls  this  case  the  only  one  "of  ques- 
tionable honesty."  Obviously  the  matter  of 
the  £230,000  wa9  not  questionable.  Lord 
Clive  committed  suicide  before  he  reached  his 
fiftieth  year.  That  a  troubled  conscience  im- 
pelled him  to  this  is  not  probable,  even  though 
he  knew  "that  a  good  part  of  his  fellow-coun- 
trymen regarded  him  as  a  cruel  and  perfidious 
tyrant."  He  suffered  from  attacks  of  melan- 
choly, and  had  made  two  attempts  at  suicide 
while  he  was  yet  a  young  clerk  in  Madras. 
Later  he  became  passionately  addicted  to  the 
opium  habit. 

Warren  Hastings,  who  was  a  bookkeeper  in 


66  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

Calcutta  in  his  youth,  became  when  39  years 
old  ( 1 77 1 )  Governor  of  Bengal,  and  a  few 
years  later  Governor  General  of  East  India. 
His  conduct  in  these  two  offices  gave  rise  to 
the  greatest  state  process  known  in  history. 
This  process,  which  the  House  of  Commons 
conducted  against  him  before  the  House  of 
Lords,  lasted  from  February  13,  1788,  to  April 
23,  1795.  The  chief  prosecutor  was  no  less 
a  person  than  Edmund  Burke.  The  trial 
dragged,  but  it  must  be  considered  that  there 
was  an  immense  amount  of  material  to  be  dealt 
with.  It  ended  with  acquittal  of  the  grave 
crimes  against  the  state  with  which  Hastings 
was  charged,  but  he  was  condemned  to  pay  the 
costs,  £80,000.  The  judgment  of  posterity — 
at  least  in  his  own  country — has  more  and 
more  swung  around  in  his  favor.  Even 
Macaulay's  renowned  article,  which  throws  a 
bright  light  upon  the  most  important  charac- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  67 

teristics  of  the  man,  is  to-day  considered  par- 
tisan and  inexact.  Hastings  is  to-day  looked 
upon  as  the  hero  who  first  worked  out  a  sys- 
tem of  civil  government  for  India  and  who 
put  an  end  to  the  worst  corruption  among  its 
officials,  and' to  the  systematic  and  wholesale 
plundering  of  the  natives.  It  is,  nevertheless, 
admitted  that  he  did  irregular  things,  violated 
the  letter  of  the  law,  broke  contractual  prom- 
ises, and  robbed  widows,  and  that  he  was  any- 
thing but  a  conscientious  politician. 

The  scene  of  the  cruelties  which  he  felt 
himself  justified  in  committing  was  in  those 
days  vastly  more  remote  in  space  from  the 
homeland  than  to-day.  But  India  is  now, 
in  point  of  time,  still  remote.  It  is  likely 
that  among  the  Mohammedans  of  to-day  the 
memory  of  that  time  persists  in  a  somewhat 
different  aspect  than  among  the  fellow- 
countrymen  of  Warren  Hastings,  despite  the 


68  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

fact  that  the  latter  assure  us  that  the  natives 
"honor"  his  name.1 

As  long  as  six  years  before  the  Hastings  trial 
began,  on  April  9,  1782,  Henry  Dundas,  then 
the  newly  appointed  Treasurer  of  the  Ad- 
miralty, and  later,  as  Lord  Melville,  First 
Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  unfolded  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  in  a  speech  of  nearly  three  hours* 
length,  "the  causes  and  extent  of  the  national 
calamities  in  the  East.  He  expatiated  on  the 
misconduct  of  the  Indian  presidencies  and  of 
the  Court  of  Directors  (of  the  East  India 
Company) ;  of  the  former,  because  they 
plunged  the  nation  into  wars  for  the  sake  of 
conquest,  condemned  and  violated  the  engage- 
ment of  treaties,  and  plundered  and  oppressed 
the  people  of  India;  of  the  latter,  because 
they  blamed  misconduct  only  when  it  was  un- 

1Cf.  Enc.  Brit,   xi    ed.,    6.v.,    and   Dictionary   National   Bi- 
ography,   art.    Warren   Hastings. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  69 

attended  with  profit,  but  exercised  a  very  con- 
stant forbearance  towards  the  greatest  delin- 
quency, as  often  as  it  was  productive  of  a  tem- 
porary gain."  The  speech  was  followed  up 
by  a  number  of  propositions  which  he  moved 
in  the  shape  of  resolutions.  The  resolutions 
were  solemnly  voted.1 

The  poet  Cowper  complained  at  the  same 
time  of  his  country 

That  she  is  rigid  in  denouncing  death 

On  petty  robbers,  and  indulges  life 

And  liberty,  and  oft  times  honor  too, 

To  peculators  of  the  public  gold. 

That  thieves  at  home  must  hang,  but  he  that  puts 

Into  his  overgorged  and  bloated  purse 

The  wealth  of  India's  provinces,  escapes. 

The  loss  of  the  Thirteen  Colonies  was  com- 
pensated for  by  the  winning  of  India.  In  the 
continuous  changing  of  fortunes  marking  the 

1  James  Mill:     "A   History  of  the  British  India"    (Book  V, 
Chap    9). 


70  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

conflict  with  France,  the  loss  of  the  colonies 
signified  a  defeat,  the  gaining  of  India  a  vic- 
tory. The  result  more  than  evened  up  the 
situation.  "In  India,  indeed,  they  had  the 
start  of  us  much  more  decidedly  than  in 
North  America;  in  India  we  had  at  the  outset 
a  sense  of  inferiority  in  comparison  with  them, 
and  fought  in  a  spirit  of  hopeless  self-de- 
fence." (Seeley,  p.  35.)  Fear  of  the  French 
was  the  deciding  motive.  "Behind  every 
movement  of  the  native  powers  we  saw  French 
intrigue,  French  gold,  French  ambition,  and 
never,  until  we  were  masters  of  the  whole 
country,  got  rid  of  that  feeling  that  the  French 
were  driving  us  out  of  it."  (p.  36.)  Here, 
then,  lay  also  the  reason  for  "the  competition 
of  the  Western  states  for  the  wealth  of  the 
regions  discovered  in  the  fifteenth  century." 
(p.  305.)  Hence  the  forcing  of  France  out 
of  America  as  well  as  out  of  India  was  the 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  71 

condition  precedent  to  dominion  over  the  Hin- 
dus and  Mohammedans  in  India.  ''This  fact, 
combined  with  the  other  fact,  equally  striking, 
of  the  great  trade  which  now  exists  between 
England  and  India,  leads  very  naturally  to  a 
theory  that  our  Indian  Empire  has  grown  up 
from  first  to  last  out  of  the  spirit  of  trade.  We 
may  imagine  that  after  having  established  our 
settlements  on  the  coast  and  defended  these 
settlements  both  from  the  native  powers  and 
from  the  envy  of  the  French,  we  then  con- 
ceived the  ambition  of  extending  our  com- 
merce further  inland;  that  perhaps  we  met 
with  new  States,  such  as  Mysore  or  the  Mah- 
ratta  Confederacy,  which  at  first  were  unwill- 
ing to  trade  with  us,  but  that  in  our  eager 
avarice  we  had  recourse  to  force,  let  loose  our 
armies  upon  them,  broke  down  their  custom- 
houses and  flooded  their  territories  in  turn 
with  our  commodities;  that  in  this  way  we 


72  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

gradually  advanced  our  Indian  trade,  which 
at  first  was  insignificant,  until  it  became  con- 
siderable, and  at  last,  when  we  had  not  only 
intimidated  but  actually  overthrown  every 
great  native  government,  .  .  .  then,  all  re- 
straint having  been  removed,  our  trade  became 
enormous."  (pp.  305-306.)  Seeley  is  not  dis- 
posed to  accept  this  view  out  of  hand.  The 
relation  of  the  various  events  to  each  other  is, 
he  thinks,  more  complex.  The  advance  of 
business  was  independent  of  the  advance  of 
conquest.  Commerce  had  been  insignificant 
up  to  1 8 13,  despite  the  vast  annexations  that 
had  gone  before;  it  had  not  developed  after 
the  monopoly  of  the  East  India  Company  had 
been  taken  away  by  law  and  the  company  as 
good  as  dissolved.  The  periods  of  the  advance 
of  commerce  and  those  of  the  advance  of  con- 
quest do  not,  in  Seeley's  opinion,  correspond 
with  each  other.     The  world  empire  began 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  y3 

with  the  protection  and  defense  of  the  factors. 
"In  the  period  which  immediately  followed, 
the  revolutionary  and  corrupt  period  of  Brit- 
ish India,  it  is  undeniable  that  we  were  hurried 
on  by  mere  rapacity.  The  violent  proceed- 
ings of  Warren  Hastings  at  Benares,  in  Oudh 
and  Rohilcund,  were  of  the  nature  of  money- 
speculations."  (p.  313.) 

Seeley  thinks  that  the  later  history  of  British 
India  was  of  different  nature.  The  clear  per- 
ception of  the  historian  fails  him  here.  His 
statements  can  only  show  that  the  connection 
between  trade  and  conquest  was  less  apparent 
in  more  recent  times.  An  end  was  put  to  the 
monstrous  abuses  of  administration — abuses 
through  which  the  East  India  Company 
erected  for  itself  a  monument  of  enduring 
shame — by  a  law  of  Pitt  of  1784  and  by  the 
reforms  of  Lord  Comwallis,  who  was  the 
Governor  General  from  1786  to  1793.     From 


74  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

this  time  on  there  was  no  longer  any  connec- 
tion between  the  governors  and  the  chiefs  of 
the  mercantile  brigands.  When,  however, 
Lord  Wellesley  as  Governor  General  in  1798 
elevated  intervention  and  annexation  to  a  prin- 
ciple, and  his  successors  really  first  began  to 
deal  according  to  this  principle,  it  is  safe  to 
say  that  they  not  only  feathered  their  own 
nests;  undoubtedly  they  well  knew  that  they 
were  opening  up  a  source  of  incomputable 
wealth  through  commerce.  The  acts  of  Lord 
Dalhousie,  who  ruled  India  from  1847  to  1856 
and  who  took  possession  in  1856  of  the  King- 
dom of  Oudh,  without  a  shadow  of  right,  as  he 
had  previously  (1851-52)  forcibly  taken  Pegu 
away  from  the  Birmans,  may  possibly  not 
have  been  the  direct  outcome  of  greed — See- 
ley  is  of  the  opinion  that  if  these  were  crimes, 
they  were  crimes  of  ambition  (p.  315)  and  it 
was,  in  any  event,  only  the  commercial  inter- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  75 

ests  of  the  homeland  and  its  Government  that 
indulged  and  supported  him.  In  the  earlier 
period  the  commercial  motive  was  partially 
concealed  in  the  greater  love  for  and  con- 
venience of  direct  robbery,  in  the  later  period 
through  the  ostensibly  purely  military  policy 
of  the  Government.  But  without  the  motive 
of  greed  the  conquest  of  India  by  Great  Brit- 
ain is  not  to  be  understood.  For  it  has  not  only 
cost  much  blood — even  if  it  was  chiefly  the 
blood  of  native  mercenaries — but  also  much 
money.  The  stake  here  was  also  a  national 
investment  of  grandiose  proportions.  It  was 
reckoned  to  Warren  Hastings  as  a  great  merit 
that  he  increased  from  three  to  five  million 
pounds  the  receipts  of  the  State,  of  which  the 
East  India  Company  was  the  immediate  bene- 
ficiary. 

x-n  before  Warren  Hastings's  deeds  and 
misdeeds  were  known  in  detail,  Richard  Price, 


76  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

already  referred  to,  wrote  (p.  103) :  "Turn 
your  eyes  to  India.  There  more  has  been  done 
than  is  now  attempted  in  America.  There 
ENGLISHMEN,  actuated  by  the  love  of 
plunder  and  the  spirit  of  conquest,  have  de- 
populated whole  kingdoms,  and  ruined  mil- 
lions of  innocent  people  by  the  most  infamous 
oppression  and  rapacity.  The  justice  of  the 
nation  has  slept  over  these  enormities.  Will 
the  justice  of  Heaven  sleep?  Are  we  not  now 
execrated  on  both  sides  of  the  globe?" 


^ 


Second    Division:      War    Against    the 
French  Republic  and  Against  Napoleon 

CHAPTER  VII 

ATTACK   UPON  THE  FRENCH  REPUBLIC.     THE 
EUROPEAN  BALANCE  OF  POWER 

In  his  enumeration  of  the  seven  great  wars 
which  England  undertook  from  1688  to  1815, 
Seeley  names  the  last  two,  "Wars  against  revo- 
lutionary France."  In  reality  these  were  a 
single  great  war,  even  though  interrupted  by 
the  Peace  of  Amiens  (1802V,  whose  conditions 
England  did  not  observe.  This  great  war  is 
pictured  by  Scclcy  as  the  continuation  and 
close  of  the  conflict  for  the  New  World  and 
India.  "As  in  the  American  War  (the  Ameri- 
can Revolution),  France  avenges  on  England 

77 


78  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

her  expulsion  from  the  New  World  (through 
the  Paris  Treaty  of  1763),  so  under  Napoleon 
she  makes  titanic  efforts  to  recover  her  lost 
place  there."  (p.  39.)  A  continental  question 
furnished  the  first  cause  of  the  war.  The 
French  National  Convention  had  decided,  on 
November  16,  1792,  that  the  mouth  of  the 
Scheldt  should  be  free  to  all  shipping.  The 
convention  thereupon  gave  notice  to  England 
that  it  would  not  be  bound  by  the  treaties — ■ 
there  were  no  less  than  five  of  these  since  the 
Peace  of  Utrecht — which  England  had  com- 
pelled the  old  monarchy  to  enter  into.  In 
these  treaties  France  had  acknowledged  the 
right  granted  to  the  Dutch  in  the  Treaty  of 
Westphalia  to  exclude  foreigners  from  the 
mouth  of  the  Scheldt.  England  had,  in  addi- 
tion, through  the  treaty  of  alliance  of  1788, 
guaranteed  this  and  other  rights  of  the  Nether- 
lands.   "It  had  long  been  a  maxim  at  White- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  79 

hall  (the  street  of  the  English  Government 
buildings  in  London)  that  the  Pays  Bas  must 
never  go  to  France.  To  prevent  such  a  disas- 
ter England  had  poured  forth  blood  and  treas- 
ure for  more  than  a  century."  ' 

The  execution  of  Louis  XVI  ostensibly  fur- 
nished the  impulse.  An  ostensible  moral  mo- 
tive was  at  hand,  that  of  putting  an  end  to  the 
doings  of  the  Jacobins.  The  most  modem 
English  historian  of  this  epoch  does  not  be- 
lieve in  the  least  in  this  motive.  "The  execu- 
tion was  in  no  sense  the  cause  of  the  war.  The 
question  turned  essentially  on  the  conduct  of 
France  towards  our  Dutch  allies."  (Rose, 
"Pitt  and  the  Great  War,"  p.  1 17) .  "For  Pitt 
and  Grenville  the  war  was  not  a  war  of  opin- 
ion— Monarchy  versus  Republic.  It  was  a 
struggle  to  preserve  the  Balance  of  Power 
which  in  all  ages  our  statesmen  have  seen  to  be 

'Holland  Rose:    "Pitt  and  the  Great  War,"  p.  83. 


80  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

incompatible  with  the  sovereignty  of  France 
in  the  Low  Countries."  (ibid.,  p.  ioo.)  The 
European  balance  of  power  is  another  formula 
'for  the  unconditional  subjugation,  brought 
about  by  any  method  preferred,  of  every  Eu- 
ropean power  which  threatens  to  become  or 
appears  to  be  dangerous  to  the  English  World 
Power,  and  for  the  alliance  with  every  Eu- 
ropean power  which,  in  like  manner,  be  the 
causes  what  they  may,  also  finds  itself  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  rival  great  power.  Hence  the 
maintaining  of  the  European  balance  of  power 
by  England  is  constantly  equivalent,  in  prac- 
tice, to  a  disturbance  of  the  European  balance 
of  power,  and  means,  therefore,  European 
war.  For,  if  the  other  powers  are  so  grouped 
that  they  maintain  among  themselves  the  bal- 
ance of  power  or  would  again  find  themselves 
in  such  a  status  after  a  short  war,  England  in- 
variably casts  its  weight  into  the  scales  against 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  81 


its  opponent,  and  by  doing  so  it  incites  and 
stirs  up  wars  or  lengthens  them,  in  order  to 
humble,  weaken  and  rob  its  opponents.     In 
this  manner  English  world  policy  acquired  the 
nimbus  of  having  freed  Europe  from  the  ty- 
rant Bonaparte.    One  may  picture  for  himself 
what  the  fate  of  France  and  of  Europe  would 
have  been  if  England  had  not  considered  it 
necessary  to  put  down  the  French  Republic. 
Perhaps  Napoleon's  military  genius  would 
have  never  had  an  opportunity  to  develop  it- 
self against  Austria  and  Prussia.     But  these 
are  idle  musings.    The  subjugation  of  France 
(and  of  Spain,  since  1713  a  dependency  of 
France)  was  the  consistent  and  important  mo- 
tive of  the  English  world  policy.     Here,  if 
anywhere,  we  see  the  tremendous  drama  of  a 
clash  of  world  powers  whose  courses  had  been 
so  laid  out  that  they  simply  must  meet  and 
come  into  collision  with  one  another;  for  a 


82  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

tendency  to  world-domination  lay  in  their  be- 
ginnings in  the  French  Revolution,  just  as  it 
had  lain  in  the  old  French.  Monarchy,  and  it 
was  by  helping  this  tendency  to  prevail  that 
"the  Little  Corporal"  made  himself  the  execu- 
tor of  the  Revolution. 

It  is  highly  fascinating  to  follow  the  twists 
and  turns  of  the  English  policy  in  this  contest, 
a  contest  which  was  finally  victorious  with  the 
help  of  the  German  powers.  One  of  the  prin- 
cipal war  methods  of  England  has  always  been 
the  capture  of  its  enemy's  merchantmen  at  sea 
and  the  searching  of  neutral  vessels.  It  was 
against  this  that  the  union  of  "armed  neutral- 
ity" was  established  by  Catherine  II  in  1779, 
and  renewed  in  1800. 


CHAPTER  VIII! 

THE  PIRATICAL  EXPEDITION  AGAINST  DENMARK 

The  arbitrary  interpretation  of  international 
law  through  which  England  had  earlier 
stirred  up  the  neutral  sea  powers  against  itself 
was  soon  thrown  into  the  shade  by  an  action 
which  filled  all  Europe  with  discontent  and 
horror.  This  was  the  sudden  attack  upon  the 
absolutely  neutral  and  peaceable  Danish  em- 
pire— the  bombardment  and  burning  of  Co- 
penhagen. 

The  Peace  of  Tilsit  was  concluded  on  July 
7,  1 807.  On  July  2 1st  Canning  received  a  con- 
fidential report  concerning  Napoleon's  inten- 
tions in  regard  to  Denmark,  and  concerning 

the  secret  articles  of  the  Tilsit  Treaty.  Neither 

83 


84  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

letters  nor  persons  could  at  that  time  reach 
London  from  Tilsit  in  fourteen  days.  (As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  report  dealt  with  an  alleged 
conversation  between  Napoleon  and  the  Tsar 
of  June  25th) }  On  July  26th  Admiral  Gam- 
bier  received  orders  to  sail  into  the  Baltic. 
"On  August  3d  the  English  Minister  Taylor 
declared  to  Count  Bernstorfr"  at  Copenhagen 
in  a  ministerial  conference  that  the  English 
Government  had  received  the  most  definite 
and  indubitable  information  that  Russia, 
through  secret  articles  of  the  Tilsit  Treaty, 
had  made  itself  party  to  an  agreement  with 
France  directed  against  England,  and  that 
Denmark  had  already  joined  in  this  agree- 
ment. And  in  the  middle  of  August,  Canning, 
the  State  Secretary,  declared  officially  that  the 
English  Government  now  possessed  authentic 
information  that  the  Duchies  of  Schleswig  and 

xEng.  Hist  Rev.,  Oct,   1901,  p.  717. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  8$ 

Holstein  were  actually  occupied  by  French 
troops."  i 

These  Duchies  have  never  been  occupied  by 
French  troops.  It  is  true  that  a  secret  treaty 
which  followed  that  of  Tilsit  did,  under  cer- 
tain conditions,  contemplate  putting  pressure 
upon  Denmark.  When,  however,  Canning, 
speaking  in  the  House  of  Commons,  desired 
to  justify  the  attack  by  the  alleged  knowledge 
of  these  articles,  and  was  taken  to  task,  he  had 
to  admit  that  "the  ministers  have  not  said 
that  they  had  in  their  possession  any  one  secret 

1  This  is  the  report  of  one  versed  in  the  matter,  set  forth 
in  an  anonymous  German  publication  which  appeared  the  same 
year  (1807),  bearing  the  title:  "Has  England  succeeded  in 
justifying  its  piratical  expedition  against  Denmark?  An  in- 
quiry inspired  by  the  English  declaration  of  September  25, 
1807."  (Kiel,  Akademische  Buchhandlung,  1807,  157  pages.) 
The  author  was  Councilor  of  Legation  Joh.  Daniel  Timotheus 
M  nthcy.  The  correctness  of  his  point  of  view  (except  for  the 
fact  that  he  took  Napoleon  too  lightly)  is  established  by  the 
modern  thorough  investigations  of  Erik  Moller  in  the  Dansk 
Historisk  Tidstrift,  1910-12,  pp.  309-422.  Moller  establishes 
also  that  the  real  contents  of  the  secret  treaty  were  entirely 
different  from  those  suspected  and  asserted  in  London. 


86  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

article,  but  that  the  substance  of  such  secret 
article  had  been  confidentially  communicated 
to  His  Majesty's  Government,  and  that  such 
communication  had  been  made  a  long  time 
previous  to  the  date  alluded  to  by  the  honor- 
able gentleman." l  (Attention  had  been  direct- 
ed to  the  fact  that  it  was  not  until  August  8th 
that  the  news  of  the  conclusion  of  peace  and 
the  text  of  the  treaty  had  reached  England's 
shores.)  Canning  nowhere  mentions  this  date. 
In  the  "Declaration"  given  at  Westminster  on 
September  25,  1807,  the  English  Government 
also  maintains  that  it  had  "received  the  most 
positive  information  of  the  determination  of 
the  present  ruler  of  France  to  occupy,  with 
a  military  force,  the  territory  of  Holstein — 
for  the  purpose  of  excluding  Great  Britain 
from  all  her  accustomed  channels  of  com- 
munication; of  inducing  or  compelling  the 

1Jan.   22,    Commons,   p.   70. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  87 

court  of  Denmark  to  close  the  passage  of  the 
Sound  against  the  British  commerce  and  navi- 
gation; and  of  availing  himself  of  the  aid  of 
the  Danish  marine  for  the  invasion  of  Great 
Britain  and  of  Ireland."  These  (supposed) 
plans  were  to  be  anticipated. 

A  modern  English  historian,1  who  eulogizes 
Canning's  genius  and  ascribes  intuitive  intel- 
lectual powers  to  him,  is  at  the  same  time  com- 
pelled to  admit:  "It  may  now  be  regarded  as 
almost  proven  that  the  information  on  which 
he  at  first  based  was  extremely  meagre.  In 
part  .  .  .  it  was  absolutely  false;  but  Canning 
did  not  know  of  its  falsity  until  August  10th." 
(The  bombardment  began  on  September  2d!) 

The  action  began  with  the  instructing  of  the 
British  Minister  at  Copenhagen  "to  reassure 
the  Danish  Minister  as  to  the  presence  of  the 

1  Anon*,  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  April,  1906,  pp.  345-361. 
I  assume  that  the  writer  is  a  historian  from  the  fact  that 
he   has   drawn    his   material    f rf mi   the   archives. 


88  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

British  fleet  in  the  Baltic,  that  it  was  not  in- 
tended as  a  menace  to  Denmark,  but  merely 
needful  to  cooperate  with  the  King  of  Sweden 
and-  protect  British  reinforcements"  (which 
had  been  brought  to  Stralsund).  These  in- 
structions bore  date  of  July  16th.  On  July 
28th  a  special  Minister  (Jackson)  was  ap- 
pointed to  the  Danish  Crown  Prince  (and  the 
Regent),  and  on  July  29th  he  received  "spe- 
cial and  very  confidential"  instructions  (in 
Canning's  own  handwriting)  in  which  ap- 
peared the  following:  "You  will  carefully 
bear  in  mind  that  the  possession  of  the  Danish 
fleet  is  the  one  main  and  indispensable  object 
to  which  the  whole  of  your  negotiations  is  to 
be  directed,  and  without  which  no  other  stipu- 
lation or  concession  can  be  considered  as  of 
any  value  or  importance.  In  the  event,  there- 
fore, of  the  Danish  Government  even  consent- 
ing to  enter  into  a  treaty  of  alliance  as  pro- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  89 

posed  in  the  project  with  which  you  are  fur- 
nished, it  will  be  necessary  that  a  secret  arti- 
cle should  be  added  to  this  treaty,  by  which 
the  delivery  of  the  Danish  fleet  must  be 
stipended  to  take  place  forthwith,  and  without 
waiting  for  the  formality  of  the  ratification  of 
the  treaty.  (Signed)  G.  Canning."  *  Jackson 
first  brought  his  ultimatum  to  Minister  Bern- 
storff,  then  (on  August  9th)  he  was  received 
at  Kiel  by  the  Danish  Crown  Prince.  The 
negotiations  were  resultless.  On  August  16th 
the  British  soldiers  landed  at  Vibeck  (be- 
tween Helsingor  and  Copenhagen).  Attempts 
were  still  made  by  the  admirals  to  compel  a 
peaceful  delivery.  The  bombardment  of  Co- 
penhagen began  on  September  2d,  and  from 
September  5th  on  it  had  terrible  effect.  The 
beautiful  cathedral  (Fruekirkc),  several 
buildings  belonging  to  the  university  and  305 

'  Rise,  in  Eng.  Hist.  Rrvirw,  Jan.,  1896,  p.  86. 


go  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

houses  were  burned.  Capitulation  and  the 
forcible  taking  away  of  the  whole  Danish  fleet 
followed. 

An  idea  of  the  depth  of  the  moral  indigna- 
tion which  this  action  aroused  in  Denmark 
and  the  duchies  can  be  gained  from  the  long 
list  of  published  protests  that  appeared,  at- 
tacking the  "tiger-policy  against  neutral  Den- 
mark" and  calling  down  the  vengeance  of 
Heaven  upon  the  despoiler.  The  most  meri- 
torious of  these  publications  is  that  of  Minis- 
terial Councilor  Manthey,  already  referred 
to,  of  which  the  most  modern  Danish  com- 
mentator of  these  events  (Moller,  referred  to 
above)  says  that  it  "vindicates  with  great 
power  the  traditional  Danish  view  of  those 
occurrences,"  and  this  view  is  confirmed  to  the 
fullest  extent  by  the  most  recent  investigations 
of  the  archives. 

Manthey  says,  among  other  things  (p.  104)  : 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  91 

"To-day,  when  the  veil  is  rent  which  hitherto 
concealed  from  princes  and  peoples  England's 
selfishness  and  ambition,  let  us  consider 
whether  so  many  a  crown  would  have  been 
brought  low  and  so  many  a  flourishing  land 
devastated  if  England's  policy,  England's  gold 
and  England's  secret  crimes  had  not  been  the 
great  ferment  by  which,  in  our  remarkable 
generation,  the  excited  masses  were  brought 
to  revolt,  and  by  which  dissolutions,  separa- 
tions and  new  alliances  were  brought  about 
and  everything  tended  toward  an  altered  state 
of  affairs  whose  eventual  realization  was  to 
cost  mankind  much  blood  and  many  tears." 
The  booklet  characterizes  (p.  8)  the  West- 
minster "Declaration"  (supra)  as  "in  its  en- 
tirety weak,  in  places  malicious,  but  always  a 
web  of  hypocrisy,  knavery  and  ignorance." 

In  England,  too,  the  general  horror  found  a 
strong  echo.    In  the  Political  Review  for  Sep- 


92  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

tember,  1807,  the  affair  is  termed  "a  scene  of 
complicated  iniquity,"  and,  after  pouring  out 
its  whole  indignation  over  the  principle — 
Might  makes  Right — with  which  the  proceed- 
ing was  sought  to  be  defended,  the  Review 
says:  "If  anything  could  add  to  that  disgust, 
that  horror  we  feel  whenever  we  contemplate 
the  subject,  it  is  the  language  of  humanity  and 
piety  affected  by  our  commanders-in-chief  em- 
ployed Li  this  expedition." 1  The  debates 
upon  the  address  from  the  throne  in  the  session 
of  Parliament  beginning  in  January,  1808, 
occupied  themselves  chiefly  with  this  matter. 
While  the  address  itself  praised  this  glorious 
deed,  six  Lords  submitted  a  protest,  "because 
no  proof  of  hostile  intention  on  the  part  of 
Denmark  has  been  adduced,  nor  any  case  of 
necessity  made  out  to  justify  the  attack  upon 

1  "Reflections    on   the   War   with   Denmark,"    etc.,    extracted 
from  Flower's  Political  Review. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  93 

Copenhagen,  without  which  the  measure  is,  in 
our  conception,  discreditable  to  the  character 
and  injurious  to  the  interests  of  this  country." 
Lord  Erskine's  individual  protest  takes  more 
than  four  pages  of  the  Register.  It  says  "that 
no  speculation  of  the  probable  fall  of  the 
Danish  fleet  into  the  possession,  or  power,  of 
France  would  justify  its  hostile  seizure  by 
Great  Britain;  that  such  a  seizure  would  be 
subversive  of  the  first  elements  of  public  law, 
and  that  until  this  attack  upon  Copenhagen 
shall  receive  vindication  by  proof  of  its  jus- 
tice, Great  Britain  has  lost  her  moral  situation 
in  the  world''1 

In  the  Lower  House  also  the  opposition 
made  itself  heard.  William  Windham,  him- 
self until  shortly  before  that  time  a  member  of 
the  Ministry,  declared  "that  the  only  way  left 
of  effacing  the  stains  thus  brought  upon  the 

1  'I  !u   Parliamentary  Register,  1808,  vol.  i,  2.  i. 


94  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

country  was  the  public  avowal  of  their  atroc- 
ity; and  he  accused  ministers  of  having  sacri- 
ficed the  national  reputation.  The  ruins  of 
Copenhagen  were  the  monument  of  their  dis- 
grace." *  On  another  occasion  the  same  re- 
nowned orator  expressed  the  opinion  that  the 
Government  had  openly  disavowed  the  princi- 
ple that  honesty  is  the  best  policy,  and  that 
when  people  began  to  make  their  theories  fit 
their  evil  practices,  it  was  a  condition  of  most 
hopeless  depravity;  this  new  system  of  moral- 
ity would  prove  a  lasting  injury  to  the  world. 
Several  other  members  of  Parliament  termed 
attempts  at  justification  "contradictory  and 
inconsistent  chatter."  One  did  not  know,  they 
said,  which  of  the  stories  dished  up  by  the 
Government  one  was  to  believe,  "It  was,  to 
use  a  coarse  expression,  to  be  sure,  but  one  that 
was  extremely  applicable,  it  was  something 

1  Pari.  Reg.,  Feb.  4,   1808. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  95 

like  swindling  the  house  out  of  its  opinion."  l 
One  member  called  the  taking  away  of  the 
Danish  fleet  plain  "theft."  "Dishonest  as  the 
expedition  to  Copenhagen"  became  a  proverb 
in  London. 

As  long  afterward  as  1822  the  poet  Thomas 
Campbell  spoke,  in  verses  dedicated  to  a  Dan- 
ish friend,  of  the  "scandalous  matter." 

That  attack,  I  allow,  was  a  scandalous  matter; 

It  was  a  deed  of  our  merciless  Tories, 
Whom  we  hate,  though  they  rule  us,  and  I  can  assure 
you 
They  had   swung  for  it  if  England  had  sat  as  their 
jury. 

Modern  English  historians  consider  the 
matter  coolly.  H.  W.  Wilson  (Trinity  Col- 
lege, Oxford)  says:  "That  the  attack  was 
necessary  no  one  will  now  deny.  England 
was  fighting  for  her  existence;  and  however 
disagreeable  was  the  task  of  striking  a  weak 

1  (Windham)    Pari.  Reg.,  p.  289. 


96  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

neutral,  she  risked  her  own  safety  if  she  left  in 
Napoleon's  hand  a  fleet  of  such  proportions."  * 
Somewhat  different  is  the  judgment  of  J.  Hol- 
land Rose  (Cambridge)  in  the  same  volume  of 
the  "Cambridge  Modern  History."  He 
writes:  "Great  Britain  suffered  a  loss  of  moral 
reputation,  which  partly  outweighed  the  gain 
brought  by  the  accession  of  material  strength 
to  her  navy  and  the  added  sense  of  security. 
The  peoples  of  the  Continent,  unaware  of  the 
reasons  that  prompted  the  action  of  Great 
Britain,  regarded  it  as  little  better  than  pirat- 
ical. Only  by  degrees  did  this  bad  impression 
fade  away.  .  .  ."  2 

There  is  an  outward  resemblance  between 
this  action  and  the  course  of  the  German  Em- 
pire towards  Belgium  in  1914.  In  both  cases 
it  was  a  matter  of  anticipating  the  enemy;  in 

1  Cambridge  Modern  History,  vol.  ix,  p.  236. 
'  Cambridge  Modern  History,  vol.  ix,  p.  299. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  97 

both  cases  there  existed  the  opinion  that  the 
enemy  would  not  observe  neutrality.  But 
there  were  these  tremendous  differences:  (1) 
In  1807  this  opinion  was  an  assumption  based 
solely  upon  rumors;  in  1914  it  was  based  on 
facts;  (2)  In  1807  Denmark  itself  had  scru- 
pulously observed  neutrality,  and  the  Regent 
of  the  country  was  even  personally  inclined  to- 
wards England;  in  1914  Belgium  had  grossly 
violated  its  neutrality  by  a  military  convention 
into  which  it  had  entered  with  England;  (3) 
Denmark  when  assailed  had  no  allies,  and  even 
if  Napoleon  had  desired  to  assist,  he  was  ut- 
terly unable  to  do  so.  Furthermore,  the 
greater  part  of  the  Danish  land  forces  was  in 
Holstein,  and  the  Government  was  so  unsus- 
picious that  it  did  not  even  bring  these  to 
Sccland.  Belgium,  on  the  contrary,  had, 
when  it  was  attacked,  the  secretly  allied  great 
powers,  England  and  France,  behind  it,  and 


98  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

both  were  in  a  position  to  render  aid;  (4) 
England  offered  Denmark  the  choice  between 
war  and  alliance;  as  a  pledge  for  this  alliance 
it  demanded  the  delivering  up  of  the  Danish 
fleet,  which  was  the  sole  object  for  which  it 
was  working.  The  German  Empire  offered  a 
choice  between  war  and  a  neutrality  which 
should  simply  permit  the  passage  of  troops, 
for  which  full  indemnity  was  solemnly 
pledged.  Many  authorities  on  international 
law  have  maintained  the  existence  of  a  right 
of  passage  through  neutral  lands,  especially 
in  the  case  where  one  belligerent  cannot  get 
at  the  other  without  going  through  neutral 
territory.  This  situation  plainly  existed  here 
as  a  result  of  the  French  fortifications  on  the 
Meuse. 


PART  II 

THE  ENGLISH  WORLD  POLICY  IN 

THE      NINETEENTH      AND 

TWENTIETH  CENTURIES 

Third  Division  :  Quarrels  in  Three  Parts 
of  the  Earth 

The  array  of  great  wars — in  Seeley's  opin- 
ion— not  only  begins  with  this  period  (1688- 
1815),  but  appears  also  to  end  there.  He 
says:  "Since  1815  we  have  had  local  wars  in 
India  and  some  of  our  colonies" — and  in 
China!  and  in  Persia! — "but  of  struggles 
against  great  European  Powers,  such  as  this 
period  saw  seven  times,  we  have  only  seen  one 
(the  Crimean  War)  in  a  period  more  than 
half  as  long   (1816-1882),  and  it  lasted  but 

two        rs."  (p.  25.)     There  is  no  presentiment 

99 


ioo  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 


here  of  what  the  twentieth  century  has  re- 
vealed to  us.  The  able  scholar  forgets  here 
also  that  the  wars  against  France  in  the  eight- 
eenth century  were  carried  on  in  good  part 
on  colonial  soil  (in  North  America),  and 
that,  in  analogy  therewith,  most  of  the  conflicts 
that  arose  in  Asia  during  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury composed  a  latent  war  against  Russia; 
to  say  nothing  of  wars  of  the  Turks  and  Japa- 
nese, back  of  which  stood  the  British  world 
power.  For  in  this  whole  period  the  British 
foreign  policy  never  rested  nor  altered  its  na- 
ture. Its  field  and  object,  however,  no  longer 
lay  chiefly  in  the  New  World,  but  in  the  Old, 
no  longer  in  America,  but  in  Asia,  and  Africa 
is  the  bridge  to  Asia.  This  is  the  tendency  for 
which  the  path  was  prepared  in  the  last  half 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  To  widen,  retain 
and  make  certain  the  possession  of  India  ap- 
pears as  the  most  important  among  the  great 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  101 

tasks  that  were  imposed  when  France  was 
forced  to  withdraw  from  the  rivalry  for  the 
mastery  of  the  seas.  There  the  fear  of  France 
had  formerly — for  more  than  a  hundred  years 
— been  a  constant  goad,  there  comes  now  the 
fear  of  Russia.  A  further  factor  is  naturally 
commercial  interests,  which  demand  an  exten- 
sion of  spheres  of  interest  and  dominion.  Fis- 
cal interests  go  hand  in  hand  with  this  factor. 
And  thus  the  agitations  and  warlike  disturb- 
ances through  which  the  territory  of  ancient 
civilizations  is  opened  to  the  wares  of  indus- 
try, persist  throughout  nearly  the  entire  nine- 
teenth century.  Parallel  with  the  gradual 
elimination  of  the  domination  of  the  East 
India  Company — which,  since  1784,  had  al- 
ready been  strongly  restricted,  being  first  de- 
prived of  its  monopoly  ( 1 8  r  5,  except  as  to 
China,  which  lasted  until  1833),  then  of  its 
commercial  functions,  and  finally  of  its  exist- 


.V, 


102  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

ence  (1858) — goes  not  only  thorough  and  suc- 
cessful reform  of  administration,  but  also  sys- 
tematic conquest.  It  finds  its  climax  in  the 
erection    of    the    so-called    Indian    Empire 

(1876). 

And  the  modern  paths  of  English  foreign 
policy,  like  the  old  ones,  have  been  cut  through 
crag  and  thicket  with  iron  mattocks  and  axes, 
and  rivers  of  blood  have  been  shed  in  the 
work. 


CHAPTER  IX 

AFGHANISTAN 

The  first  important  conflict  into  which 
Great  Britain  was  brought  in  following  out 
these  aims  with  accustomed  energy  and  un- 
scrupulousness  was  the  war  with  Afghanistan. 

Feuds  among  this  empire,  the  Indian  Sikhs 
and  the  neighboring  Persia  were  at  the  bottom 
of  the  trouble.  English  and  Russian  influ- 
ences were  everywhere  opposed  to  one  another. 
Both,  for  instance,  carried  on  a  long  rivalry 
for  the  favors  of  the  ruler  of  the  eastern  terri- 
tory, Dost  Mohammed,  who  lived  in  Kabul. 
The  Russians  had  the  advantage.  Together 
with  Persia  they  attacked  Herat,  the  capital 
of  the  western  district.    Lord  Auckland,  who 

had  been  appointed  in  [836  Governor  General 

103 


104  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

of  India,  considered  the  time  ripe  for  par- 
ticipation. He  allied  himself  with  the  Sikhs 
and  deposed  Dost  Mohammed.  On  his  throne 
he  set  an  unpopular  pretender,  who,  despite 
better  title  to  the  crown,  lived  in  exile  (August 
7,  1839).  The  English  Government  approved 
and  supported  this  coup  d'etat.  For  a  time  all 
seemed  to  be  going  well,  and  there  was  rejoic- 
ing in  London  over  the  splendid  issue.  In 
November,  1841,  the  Afghans  revolted  against 
the  prince  imposed  upon  them.  The  result 
was  a  complete  and  shameful  defeat  of  the 
English  frontier  troops.  They  were  com- 
pelled hastily  to  evacuate  the  territory,  and  to 
surrender  all  their  cannons  except  six,  which 
they  were  permitted  to  retain  for  the  march 
back.  Dost  Mohammed,  who  had  been  carried 
captive  to  India,  returned  home.  His  son, 
Akhbar  Khan,  had  been  the  leader  of  the  re- 
volt.   The  retreat  of  the  English  through  the 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  105 

Koord  Kabul  Pass  reminds  one  of  the  great 
retreat  of  181 2,  but  its  results  were  much 
worse.  As  in  181 2,  the  winter  was  severe. 
The  situation  was  made  worse  by  the  fact  that 
many  women  and  children  were  with  the  retir- 
ing army.  Akhbar  Khan,  who  followed  the 
retreat,  eventually  took  the  women  and  chil- 
dren under  his  protection.  General  Elphin- 
stone,  the  commander-in-chief,  also  had  to  sur- 
render to  him.  The  army  itself  was  continu- 
ously attacked  by  the  fanatical  mountain 
tribes.  After  thousands  had  fallen,  the  rem- 
nant found  itself  trapped  in  the  Jugdulluk 
Pass.  An  indiscriminate  massacre  followed. 
Of  the  entire  army,  which  had  numbered  more 
than  16,000  men  at  the  beginning  of  the  ex- 
pedition, a  single  man  survived,  who  had  taken 
refuge  under  the  walls  of  Diellabad,  in  which 
city  an  English  garrison  was  maintained.  The 
fortress  was  besieged  by  Akhbar  Khan,  but  in 


106         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

vain.  English  auxiliary  troops  under  Gen- 
eral Pollock  appeared  and  the  siege  was 
raised.  The  English  pressed  on  to  Kabul  and 
liberated  the  women  and  children,  but  they 
held  it  advisable,  despite  this  success,  to  evac- 
uate the  land  and  reinstate  Dost  Mohammed. 

Auckland's  successor,  Lord  Ellenborough, 
issued  on  October  i,  1842,  a  proclamation,  in 
which  he  declared  that  the  Government  of- 
India  would  remain  "content  with  the  limits 
nature  appears  to  have  assigned  to  its  empire," 
and  that  "to  force  a  sovereign  upon  a  reluctant 
people  would  be  inconsistent  with  the  policy  as 
it  is  with  the  principles  of  the  British  Govern- 
ment." The  noble  lord  appears  to  have  looked 
upon  the  preceding  conquests  in  India  as 
"natural,"  and  upon  the  English  domination 
there  as  an  object  of  the  eager  aspiration  of 
the  Indians. 

A  glance  into  the  literature  of  that  time 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  107 

gives  one  an  idea  of  the  stupefaction  and  em- 
bitterment  evoked  in  the  "Motherland"  by  the 
frightful  catastrophe.  An  author  who  criti- 
cized the  British  foreign  policy  of  that  time 
with  unusual  acumen  and  brilliancy  was  the 
Scotchman,  David  Urquhart.  In  his  polemic 
against  the  Edinburgh  Review,  which,  as  or- 
gan of  the  Whig  party,  then  in  the  saddle,  had 
the  boldness  to  defend  the  war,  he  seeks  to 
make  the  madness  of  the  defeat  clear  by  an 
imaginary  dialogue  between  Lord  Palmerston, 
both  then  and  often  thereafter  the  spirit  of 
the  British  world  policy,  and  a  privy  council- 
or.   The  dialogue  follows: 

Lord  Palmerston — We  must  march  to  Ka- 
bul, dethrone  his  ruler  and  set  up  another. 

Privy  Councilor — Are  we  attacked  by  the 
Afghans?     Arc  treaties  violated,  etc.? 

Lord   P. — No,  none  of  these  things.     But 


108  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

Dost  Mohammed  is  friendly  to  Persia,  and 
Persia  is  friendly  to  Russia;  and  therefore  we 
must  destroy  him. 

Councilor — But  what  do  you  propose  to 
do  with  Persia? 

Lord  P. — Oh,  Persia  is  beaten  back,  the 
siege  of  Herat  is  raised,  and  we  have  nothing 
to  fear  from  her. 

Councilor — What  do  you  propose  to  do 
with  Russia? 

Lord  P. — Oh,  Russia  has  sent  to  us  the  most 
satisfactory  assurances  and  we  have  nothing  to 
fear  from  her;  quite  the  contrary;  indeed,  she 
can  do  nothing,  for  her  missions  and  expedi- 
tions have  utterly  failed. 

Councilor — The  danger  is  over,  you  are 
satisfied  with  the  power  whence  it  sprang,  and 
after  that  you  go  to  send  armies  into  the  terri- 
tories of  friendly  people! 

The  Privy  Councilor  and  the  Monarch, 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  109 

says  Urquhart,  must  at  once  have  said:  "This 
is  a  case  for  Bedlam." 

In  another  passage  he  contrasts  the  conduct 
of  England  with  that  of  Mongolians,  of  whom 
an  Arab  historian  wrote  that  they  systematic- 
ally ravage  and  murder,  but  "without  hatred 
and  vengeance."     He  continues: 

"Into  Central  Asia  we  march  an  army 
among  a  people  so  friendly  as  to  be  ready 
even  to  accept  our  government — we  set  up  a 
pretender — we  support  the  perpetration  of 
every  internal  folly  and  crime — we  do  every- 
thing that  can  arouse  a  people  already  subject 
to  us  through  good  will  and  respect  into  hatred 
alike  and  contempt.  Our  army  is  destroyed. 
We  make  up  our  minds  that  we  shall  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  country,  and  yet  we 
send  an  army  there  again  to  ravish  and  destroy 
without  even  the  thought  of  retaining  posses- 
sion ;  so  that  the  contrast  between  the  Mongols 


no         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

and  the  British  is  this — that  the  first  destroyed 
and  ravished  by  calculation,  and  without 
either  hatred  or  vengeance,  and  that  our 
troops,  composed  of  so-called  citizens  and 
Christians,  and  sent  forth  from  a  country 
honoring  itself  with  the  name  of  Britain,  es- 
teeming itself  enlightened,  philanthropic  and 
religious,  appear  there  without  any  calcula- 
tion, to  devastate  and  destroy,  moved  only  by 
hatred  and  vengeance.  As  to  the  pretext  that 
we  marched  to  regain  the  prisoners,  however 
it  might  have  served  for  the  cry  of  the  mo- 
ment, it  is  too  hollow  and  absurd  to  refer  to 
now.  The  prisoners  could  have  been  endan- 
gered only  by  the  step  which  we  took;  and  for 
them  to  be  returned  to  us  it  required  that  we 
should  cease  to  reperpetrate  crime,  and  to 
hold  as  a  slave  the  Prince  whom  we  had  so 
cruelly  dethroned." 

These  atrocities  brought  a  tragic  fate  for  an 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  in 

admirable  and  talented  young  man,  Captain 
Burnes,  an  authority  on  Afghanistan,  who,  en- 
trusted with  an  official  mission,  warned  in  vain 
against  the  Government's  mistaken  measures. 
Sir  T.  W.  Kaye,  who  is  to  be  thanked  for  the 
best  history  of  this  war,  remarks  that  "it 
should  never  be  forgotten  ...  by  those  who 
would  form  a  correct  estimate  of  the  character 
and  career  of  Alexander  Burnes,  that  both 
have  been  misrepresented  in  those  collections 
of  state  papers  which  are  supposed  to  furnish 
the  best  materials  of  history,  but  which  are 
often  in  reality  only  one-sided  compilations 
of  garbled  documents — counterfeits,  which  the 
ministerial  stamp  forces  into  currency,  de- 
frauding a  present  generation,  and  handing 
down  to  posterity  a  chain  of  dangerous  lies." 
Justin  McCarthy,  who  cites  this  passage,  says 
that  not  until  years  after  Burnes  met  his  fear- 
ful  end    (he  was  murdered  in   the   riots  of 


ri2         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

November  21,  1841)  did  it  become  known  that 
the  reports  which  he  had  sent  in  had  been  laid 
before  the  House  of  Commons  by  the  English 
Government  in  such  a  mutilated  and  per- 
verted form  that  it  was  made  to  appear  as  if 
he  had  approved  and  recommended  the  policy 
against  which  he  had  felt  himself  impelled  to 
issue  a  warning. 

McCarthy  terms  the  history  of  these  years 
(1839-42)  "a  tale  of  such  misfortune,  blunder 
and  humiliation  as  the  annals  of  England  do 
not  anywhere  else  present.  Blunders  which 
were,  indeed,  worse  than  crimes,  and  a  princi- 
ple of  action  which  it  is  a  crime  in  any  ruler 
to  sanction,  brought  things  to  such  a  pass  that 
in  a  few  years  from  the  accession  of  the  Queen 
we  had  in  Afghanistan  soldiers  who  were  posi- 
tively afraid  to  fight  the  enemy,  and  some  Eng- 
lish officials  who  were  not  ashamed  to  treat 
for  the  removal  of  our  most  formidable  foes 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  113 

by  purchased  assassination.  .  .  .  This  chapter 
will  teach  us  how  vain  is  a  policy  founded  on 
evil  and  ignoble  principles.  .  .  .  We  had 
gone  completely  out  of  our  way  for  the  pur- 
pose of  meeting  mere  speculative  dangers."  1 
Grown  wiser  through  misfortune,  England 
did,  indeed,  refrain  for  four  decades  from  in- 
terfering with  the  affairs  of  Afghanistan.  In 
the  meanwhile  the  Russian  peril  increased. 
There  were  renewed  and  bitter  conflicts. 
There  was  again  a  revolt  in  Kabul.  The  en- 
tire personnel  of  the  British  Legation  was 
slain  (September  3,  1879).  Entrance  into  the 
country  had  been  refused  the  legation  in  the 
preceding  year,  but  the  Afghans,  yielding  to 
force,  had  withdrawn  their  opposition.  After 
repeated  battles  England  was  compelled  to 
abandon  its  demand  to  maintain  a  permanent 

'Justin  McCarthy:    "A   History  of  Our  Own  Times,"  vol.   i, 
pp.    174-5,    205.      Tauchnitz    edition. 


ii4  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

legation,  and  promised  once  more  to  evacuate 
the  land.  Since  then  the  Foreign  Office  has 
wooed  the  favor  of  the  Emir.  In  the  Anglo- 
Russian  Convention  of  August  31,  1907,  Eng- 
land renounced  any  purpose  of  altering  po- 
litical conditions  in  Afghanistan,  of  mixing  in 
its  administration  or  of  annexing  its  territory, 
and  pledged  itself  not  to  exert  its  influence  in 
any  manner  menacing  to  Russia.  Russia 
acknowledged  Afghanistan  as  lying  outside 
the  sphere  of  its  influence. 


CHAPTER   X 

THE  OPIUM  WAR 

Upon  the  Afghans  English  policy  tried  to 
impose  a  hated  ruler;  upon  the  Chinese,  at 
about  the  same  period,  a  hated  commodity. 

As  is  well  known,  China  opposed  for  many 
years  the  entrance  of  all  European  traders  and 
their  wares.  After  the  way  had  been  finally 
opened,  John  Company — as  the  East  India 
Company  was  called  in  England — reaped  the 
chief  successes.  Its  main  article  of  commerce 
was  opium,  won  from  poppies  cultivated  in 
India.  The  growing  of  poppies  was  exclu- 
sively under  Government  control  (en  regie). 
After  the  company  lost  its  monopoly,  the  trade 
assumed  much  greater  proportions.  Tt  was 
nothing  but  smuggling,  for  all  commerce  with 


n6         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

opium  was  strictly  forbidden  by  Chinese  laws. 
The  fearful  moral  and  physical  effects  of  the 
indulgence  in  opium  formed  the  express 
ground  for  this  prohibition. 

But  the  Chinese  authorities  were  unable  to 
check  the  smuggling  in  the  face  of  the  English 
Government's  systematic  furtherance  of  it 
The  smugglers  became  bolder  and  more  un- 
scrupulous, the  complaints  of  the  Chinese  au- 
thorities louder.  The  English  Government 
declared  that  it  had  no  intention  of  placing 
British  subjects  in  a  position  to  disregard  the 
laws  of  the  land  with  which  they  were  carry- 
ing on  trade.  No  one  took  this  declaration 
seriously.  Nevertheless,  the  Emperor  Suan- 
Tsung  believed  himself  in  a  position  to  ven- 
ture a  decisive  step.  Through  Governor  Ling 
in  Canton  he  issued  a  demand  for  the  deliver- 
ing up  of  all  contraband  stores  of  opium. 
Twenty  thousand  cases  of  the  valuable  product 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  117 

were  given  to  the  flames.  The  English  agent 
''charged  with  the  oversight  of  the  commerce 
with  China"  turned  to  the  Governor  General 
of  India  with  a  plea  for  support.  He  declared 
that  the  life  and  property  of  British  subjects 
had  been  attacked  and  were  in  danger,  and 
begged  the  Governor  General  to  send  as  many 
warships  as  he  could  spare.  The  Opium  War 
had  begun.  The  hostilities  on  land  and  sea 
lasted  from  February,  1840,  until  August, 
1 841.  England  and  opium  won  a  "glorious" 
victory.  China  was  compelled  to  open  five 
harbors,  to  cede  Hongkong,  and  to  pay  $22,- 
500,000  (£4,500,000)  as  a  war  indemnity  and 
an  additional  $6,250,000  (£1,250,000)  for  the 
opium  burned. 

The  conscience  of  the  nation  did  not  remain 
mute.  A  flood  of  articles,  filled  with  expres- 
sions of  shame  and  moral  indignation,  was 
poured  out  throughout  the  land.  In  the  House 


n8         WARLIKE  ENGLAND, 

of  Commons  William  Ewart  Gladstone  made 
one  of  his  earliest  important  speeches.  "I  am 
not  competent,"  he  said,  "to  judge  how  long 
this  war  may  last  .  .  .  but  this  I  can  say,  that 
a  war  more  unjust  in  its  origin,  a  war  more  cal- 
culated in  its  progress  to  cover  this  country 
with  disgrace,  I  do  not  know  and  I  have  not 
read  of."  l 

After  the  conclusion  of  hostilities  the  vener- 
able Duke  of  Wellington  was  charged  with 
the  duty  of  moving  in  the  House  of  Lords  a 
vote  of  thanks  for  the  army  and  navy — "the 
victor  in  years  of  warfare  against  soldiers  un- 
surpassed in  history" — comments  McCarthy 


'J.  Morley,  the  biographer  of  Gladstone,  says  on  this  point 
("The  Life  of  William  Ewart  Gladstone,"  vol.  i,  p.  226)  :  "This 
transaction  began  to  make  Mr.  Gladstone  uneasy,  as  was  in- 
deed to  be  expected  in  anybody  who  held  that  a  state  should 
have  a  conscience."  This  Morley  is  the  same  man  who,  as 
Viscount  Morley,  represented  the  present  Government  in  the 
Upper  House.  He  withdrew  from  the  Cabinet  on  account  of 
England's  participation  in  the  War  of  1914,  of  which  he 
disapproved. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  119 

(vol.  i,  p.  140) — "to  the  fleet  and  army  which 
triumphed  over  the  unarmed,  helpless,  child- 
like Chinese." 

The  opium  question  was  not  settled  by  the 
war.  The  import  of  opium  from  India  to 
China,  which  in  1810-11  amounted  to  hardly 
more  than  4,000  cases  (so-called  piculs,  each 
containing  133  pounds),  had  in  1835-36 
reached  a  yearly  average  of  35,500  cases.  The 
imports  continued  to  increase,  in  the  face  of 
every  protest,  and  in  1855  more  than  78,000 
cases  were  brought  across  the  border.  The 
English  Government  put  pressure  upon  China 
to  legalize  a  trade  which  it  was  powerless  to 
suppress,  and  thus  to  make  of  it  a  regular 
source  of  fiscal  income.  This  was  finally  done 
by  a  commercial  treaty  of  1858. 

"Concurrently  there  was  in  England  a  re- 
vival of  the  movement  against  the  policy  of 
forcing  opium  on  China.    Even  in  the  time  of 


120         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

the  East  India  Company's  monopoly,  prior  to 
1833,  some  voices  had  been  raised  in  favor  of 
actively  assisting  the  Chinese  Government  in 
enforcing  its  prohibition  of  the  foreign  im- 
port; and  quite  apart  from  the  parliamentary 
opposition  to  the  Government  of  the  day,  a 
formidable  body  of  public  opinion  had  gath- 
ered force  and  enlisted  the  support  of  the 
leaders  of  religious  and  philanthropic  work 
on  the  side  of  the  movement.  This  feeling  was 
encouraged  and  its  utterance  strengthened  by 
the  almost  unanimous  expression  of  opinion 
by  the  Protestant  missionaries,  both  English 
and  American,  working  in  the  China  field, 
that  opium  smoking  was  a  great  moral  evil 
which  seriously  impeded  their  efforts  to  bring 
the  Chinese  to  recognize  the  truths  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  that  it  was  incumbent  on  all  Chris- 
tian nations  to  dissociate  themselves  from  a 
trade  which  brought  disrepute  upon  the  for- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  121 

eign,  i.  e.,  the  Christian  name.  The  move- 
ment culminated  in  a  memorial  (Papers  re- 
lating to  opium,  p.  77),  presented  in  August, 
!^5S)  DY  Lord  Shaftesbury  as  chairman  of  a 
committee  formed  to  sever  all  connection  of 
the  English  people  and  its  Government  with 
the  opium  trade.  .  .  } 

"Public  opinion  in  America  was  pro- 
nounced against  the  opium  trade.  Of  the  Prot- 
estant missionaries  In  China  during  the  years 
1834  to  i860,  it  may  be  said  generally  that 
the  Americans  outnumbered  the  English  in  the 
proportion  of  two  to  one;  and  their  reports 
to  the  home  societies  produced  a  marked  ef- 
fect on  the  deeply  religious  sense  of  the  Ameri- 
can people."  ■ 

The  repugnance  against  the  business  was 
stronger  in  America  than  in  England.     The 

'Morse:     "The    International    Relation!   of  the   Chinese   Em- 
pire"   (London,   1910),  p.  550. 
'Id.,   p.   551. 


122         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

representative  of  the  United  States,  moreover, 
was  the  only  one  who,  in  the  negotiations  of 
the  years  1832-44,  expressly  supported  the 
Chinese  prohibition  of  the  trade  in  opium,  and 
many  American  merchants  in  China  are  said 
to  have  abstained  from  the  trade  before  that 
period  on  moral  grounds.  It  was  the  Ameri- 
can Government,  in  the  Philippines,  too, 
which  brought  about  the  opium  conference 
which  met  at  Shanghai  on  February  1,  1909, 
and  which  declared  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the 
Government  to  prevent  the  export  of  opium 
to  every  country  which  had  forbidden  its  im- 
port. 

The  trade  flourished  without  interruption 
(in  1880  the  importations  amounted  to  some 
97,000  piculs,  about  6,600  tons)  until  only  re- 
cently, when,  under  the  influence  of  the  revolu- 
tionary movement  in  China,  renewed  efforts 
were  made  to  suppress  it.    Even  the  cultiva- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  123 

tion  of  the  opium  poppy,  which  had  steadily 
increased  in  China  itself,  has  been  forbidden. 

The  opium  trade  continued  to  be  a  severe 
burden  upon  the  English  conscience — whether 
from  religious  or  ethical-philosophical 
grounds.  Finally,  in  1907,  the  British  Gov- 
ernment announced  its  willingness  gradually 
to  reduce  the  export  of  opium  from  India  to 
China,  so  that  it  should  cease  entirely  in  ten 
years.  It  will  be  interesting  to  see  whether  this 
will  really  be  done. 

During  all  this  period  China,  as  is  well 
known,  suffered  from  deep  and  serious  dis- 
turbances. Along  with  the  curious  Taiping 
Rebellion,  which  lasted  more  than  a  decade 
( 1 855-1 866),  came  gradually  attacks  from 
the  side  of  England,  which,  as  had  earlier  been 
the  case  in  the  Crimean  War  and  in  all  ques- 
tions affecting  the  Near  and  Far  East,  had 
1  ranee  in  its  train. 


i24         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 


The  case  of  the  lorcha  (river-boat)  Arrow 
furnished  the  ground  for  this  war.  The  Ar- 
row was  a  Chinese  vessel  which  at  the  time 
was  sailing  under  the  British  flag,  quite  with- 
out right.  A  Chinese  watch  had,  on  October 
8,  1855,  arrested  twelve  men  from  this  boat 
on  a  charge  of  piracy.  The  English  consul 
in  Canton  demanded  the  surrender  of  the  pris- 
oners upon  the  ground  that  the  vessel  was  an 
English  ship.  (As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  had 
for  a  time  sailed  as  an  English  vessel,  but 
the  registry  period  had  expired).  Upon  the 
refusal  by  the  Chinese  of  his  demand,  the  con- 
sul appealed  to  the  envoy  plenipotentiary  in 
Hongkong.  The  latter  demanded  not  only 
the  surrender  of  the  arrested  men,  but  also  an 
apology  and  the  promise  of  the  Chinese  offi- 
cials not  to  repeat  such  an  offense.  The  Chi- 
nese replied  with  further  representations,  and 
Canton  was  immediately  bombarded.     The 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  125 

operations  on  land  and  water  lasted  twenty- 
two  days. 

In  England  the  people  were  not  altogether 
pleased  with  this  course.  Its  illegality  was 
only  too  apparent.  In  the  Upper  House  the 
venerable  Lord  Lyndhurst  declared  that 
neither  law  nor  common-sense  could  justify 
it.  It  was,  he  declared,  impossible  to  place 
a  Chinese  boat  in  Chinese  waters  outside  the 
pale  of  Chinese  law.  "A  lorcha  owned  by  a 
Chinese  purchased  a  British  flag;  did  that 
make  her  a  British  vessel?"  had  been  the 
query  of  the  Chinese  governor.  "Indeed," 
said  Lord  Lyndhurst,  "when  we  are  talking 
of  treaty  transactions  with  Eastern  nations, 
we  have  a  kind  of  loose  law  and  loose  notion  of 
morality  in  regard  to  them."  A  motion  to 
disavow  the  proceeding  was  lost  in  the  House 
Lords,  by  a  vote  of  110  to  146.  In  the 
L  A-.er  House,  however,  Cobdcn  procured  the 


126         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 


passage  of  a  vote  of  censure  by  a  small  ma- 
jority. It  was  a  blow  to  Lord  Palmerston's 
cabinet  and  came  in  part  from  some  of  his 
former  adherents.  Audacious  and  confident 
as  always,  Lord  Palmerston  dissolved  Parlia- 
ment. He  gave  out  the  parole:  "An  insolent 
barbarian  violated  the  British  flag,  broke  the 
engagements  of  treaties,"  etc.  The  parole 
worked.  Palmerston  won  a  brilliant  victory 
at  the  polls. 

But  had  the  case  of  the  piratical  vessel  and 
the  bombardment  of  Canton  triumphed? 
McCarthy  gave  this  judgment:  "The  truth 
is  that  there  has  seldom  been  so  flagrant  and 
inexcusable  an  example  of  high-handed  law- 
lessness in  the  dealings  of  a  strong  with  a  weak 
nation"  And  G.  M.  Trevelyan,  writing  as 
recently  as  1913,  says:  "It  is  probable  that 
every  man,  even  the  most  hearty  imperialist, 
who  to-day  studies  the  treatment  of  China  by 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  127 

Palmerston  in  the  affair  of  the  Arrow,  will 
arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  he  abused  the 
strength  of  Britain  and  brought  on  a  war 
originating  from   an   unworthy   quarrel/'1 

It  was  a  tedious  war  that  was  thus  begun 
and  that  was  gladly  supported  by  Louis  Na- 
poleon. Not  until  the  autumn  of  i860  did 
it  reach  its  end,  after  the  summer  palace  at 
Peking  had  been  looted  for  three  days  by 
English  and  French  officers.  That  a  deep 
hatred  for  Europeans  has  been  nourished 
among  the  Chinese  by  such  methods  has  made 
itself  apparent  in  later  occurrences  of  far- 
reaching  consequences. 

1  Trcvclyan,  "Life  of  John  Bright,"  p.  258. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   CRIMEAN    WAR 

After  Napoleon  had  been  crushed  and  the 
conflict  of  more  than  a  century  against 
France's  rivalry  at  land  and  sea  had  been 
closed,  the  eyes  of  the  English  policy  were, 
until  nearly  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, directed  anxiously  toward  Russia.  But 
only  a  single  European  war  in  which  Eng- 
land was  directly  interested  resulted  there- 
from. The  Crimean  War  was  the  work  of 
Lord  Palmerston,  who  had  the  ambition  to 
accomplish  for  his  native  land  what  the  elder 
Pitt  had  accomplished  a  hundred  years  earlier. 
What  France  had  been  to  Pitt,  Russia  was 
to  Palmerston.  To  Palmerston,  as  to  Pitt,  war 
was  an  object  of  inclination,  although  both 

128 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  129 

were  anything  except  military  leaders.  Fear 
lay  at  the  root  of  the  actions  of  both.  Fear 
of  the  growing  strength  of  the  rival,  and  the 
conviction  that  the  utmost  watchfulness  was 
the  duty  of  the  state  made  war  appear  a  neces- 
sity to  them  in  that  moment  when  they  be- 
lieved that  they  could  thus  render  futile  the 
enemy's  plans.  At  such  a  time  war  appeared 
to  them  no  less  "lovable"  than  it  had  appeared 
to  Napoleon  the  Great. 

"He  (Palmerston)  believed  from  the  first 
that  the  pretensions  of  Russia  would  have  to 
be  put  down  by  force  of  arms,  and  could  not 
be  put  down  in  any  other  way;  he  believed 
that  the  danger  to  England  from  the  aggran- 
dizement of  Russia  was  a  capital  danger  call- 
ing for  any  extent  of  national  sacrifice  to  avert 
it.  He  believed  that  a  war  with  Russia  was 
inevitable,  and  he  preferred  taking  it  sooner 
to  taking  it  later.  ...   He  understood  better 


i3o  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

than  any  one  else  the  prevailing  temper  of  the 
English  people."  1 

The  war  was  undertaken,  in  alliance  with 
Louis  Napoleon  for  the  support  of  Turkey,  by 
an  invasion  of  the  Peninsula  of  Crimea  in 
September,  1854.  The  participation  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Sardinia,  whose  policy  was  di- 
rected by  Cavour,  improved  the  chances  of 
the  allies.  After  Sebastopol  had  fallen  (Sep- 
tember 9,  1855),  and  Tsar  Nicholas  had  died, 
the  war  began  to  die  down  in  the  face  of  a 
general  unwillingness  to  carry  it  on,  and  Na- 
poleon III  brought  about  peace,  which  was 
confirmed  in  his  capital  city  in  March,  1856, 
and  added  to  his  glory.  In  England  the  Cri- 
mean War  was  remembered  unpleasantly, 
among  other  reasons  because  it  brought  to 
light  the  serious  defects  of  the  army's  organ- 
ization, especially  on  the  sanitary  side.    At 

1  McCarthy,  II,  Chap.  2,  p.  208.   (Tauchnitz  ed.) 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  131 

the  outset  the  war  had  been  popular,  espe- 
cially since  it  was  a  reaction  from  the  pacifi- 
cism connected  with  the  liberal  tendencies  of 
that  time.  Soon,  however,  impatience  and 
disappointment  became  general;  "everybody" 
declared  that  the  campaign  was  a  disrepu- 
table affair.1  Even  after  peace  was-  made, 
public  opinion  remained  dissatisfied  with  the 
manner  in  which  the  war  was  conducted,  as 
well  as  with  its  political  consequences.  It  had 
to  be  admitted  that  those  farseeing  men  who 
had  warned  strongly  against  the  campaign 
were  right  At  the  head  of  these  stood  a 
man  whose  genius  and  character  no  one  in 


'In  November,  1854,  there  were  2,000  wounded  and  sick  in 
the  hospital  at  Scutari,  and  in  this  whole  month  only  six 
received  clean  shirts.  (Trevelyan,  "Life  of  J"!m  Bright,"  p. 
242.)  A  leading  article  of  the  Timu,  which  in  those  <i:ivs 
Vrai  s'ill  written  by  able  and  occasionally  also  by  morally 
earnest  men,  complained,  on  December  23,  1854,  of  "the  in- 
competency, lethargy,  aristocratic  hauteur,  otiici;il  indifference, 
favor,  routine,  pervt  rseinsH  and  Stupidity  which  revel  and 
in  the  camp  before   Scbastopol."      (Ibid.,   p.  236.) 


132  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

Great  Britain  would  to-day  venture  to  call 
in  question:  John  Bright.  His  opponent, 
Lord  Salisbury,  termed  him  the  greatest 
English  orator  of  his  century.  Immediately 
after  the  breaking  out  of  the  war,  in  a  series 
of  splendid  orations  in  Parliament,  Bright  at- 
tacked the  principle  of  waging  war  in  order 
to  preserve  the  balance  of  power,  and  the  sys- 
tem of  alliances  connected  with  such  a  course. 
His  reference  to  the  Angel  of  Death  going 
through  the  land  became  famous  during  the 
peace  negotiations  in  Vienna.  "The  Angel 
of  Death  has  been  abroad  throughout  the 
land;  you  may  almost  hear  the  beating  of 
his  wings,"  he  exclaimed.  The  Vienna  nego- 
tiations came  to  grief  over  the  question  of 
the  neutralizing  of  the  Black  Sea;  to  win  this 
point,  Palmerston  carried  on  the  war  for  an- 
other year.  Fourteen  years  later  (1870)  Rus- 
sia declared  that  it  would  not  longer  be  bound 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  133 

by  this  declaration;  it  tore  up  the  declaration, 
like  so  much  waste  paper,  and  England  was 
frustrated.1  A  conference  of  the  powers  in 
London  (January,  1871)  declared  this  clause 
of  the  treaty  null  and  void. 

Gladstone,  who  belonged  to  the  cabinet  re- 
sponsible for  the  war,  declared  afterward  that 
it  had  been  more  sentiment  than  reason  that 
had  made  the  war  popular,  but  that  it  was 
more  reason  than  sentiment  that  had  cast  him 
into  "the  abyss  of  odium."  2 

We  may  accept  these  verdicts.  No  thought- 
ful man  of  English  nationality  could  be  found 
to-day  who  would  be  inclined  to  attempt  to 
justify  the  Crimean  War. 

^he   verdict   is   Trevelyan's.      See   "Life    of   John   Bright," 
p.   247. 
'Morley,  "Life  of  Gladstone,"  I,  p.  495. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE    IONIAN    ISLANDS 

Great  Britain  had  secured  for  itself  a 
strange  legacy  out  of  the  ruins  of  the  Napo- 
leonic bankruptcy.  Under  the  name  of  "the 
United  States  of  the  Ionian  Islands,"  Corfu, 
Cephalonia,  Zakynthos,  Paxos,  Ithaca  and  Cy- 
thera  had  been  created  a  "free  and  independ- 
ent state"  by  means  of  a  special  treaty  between 
Great  Britain,  Russia,  Austria  and  Prussia, 
and  had  been  placed  under  the  protection  of 
the  power  first  named.  A  Lord  High  Com- 
missioner was  to  assume  legislative  and  execu- 
tive functions.  "A  constitutional  charter  of 
1 8 17  formed  a  system  of  government  that  soon 
became  despotic  enough  to  satisfy  Metternich 

134 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  135 

himself."1  The  Lord  High  Commissioner 
could  simply  do  whatever  he  wished  up  to 
1848,  when  changes  were  made. 

There  had  before  that  been  no  lack  of  un- 
rest, and  in  this  troubled  year  there  was  an 
uprising  in  Cephalonia,  "which  the  Lord 
High  Commissioner  suppressed  with  cruel 
rigor.  Twenty-two  people  had  been  hanged, 
three  hundred  or  more  had  been  flogged,  most 
of  them  without  any  species  of  judicial  in- 
vestigation. The  fire-raisings  and  destruc- 
tion of  houses  and  vineyards  were  of  a  fierce 
brutality  to  match."  A  regime  of  terror  fol- 
lowed which  extended  to  the  other  islands. 
By  virtue  of  his  "power  of  high  police"  the 
Lord  High  Commissioner  was  able  to  put  an 
end  to  the  activities  of  any  one,  that  is,  "to  tear 
him  from  his  home,  his  business  and  his  live- 
lihood.    This  high  police  power  was  princi- 

1  Morlcy,  "Life  of  Gladstone,"  I,  p.   598. 


136  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

pally  invoked  against  editors  of  newspapers. 
A  distasteful  editorial  was  not  infrequently 
punished  by  deportation  to  some  deserted, 
rocky  island,  inhabited  only  by  a  handful  of 
fisher  folk."  It  is  a  characteristic  fact  that 
a  special  report  concerning  this  method  of 
government,  made  by  Gladstone,  who  was  sent 
to  the  islands  on  a  special  mission  in  1858  to 
introduce  reforms,  still  lay  in  the  archives  of 
the  Colonial  Office  as  late  as  the  year  1903 
("still  existed  in  the  archives  of  the  Colonial 
Office  ...  a  separate  report  which  every- 
body afterwards  agreed  that  it  was  not  ex- 
pedient to  publish") . 

First  among  the  reasons  for  the  dissatisfac- 
tion was  the  wish  to  become  a  part  of  the 
new  Kingdom  of  Greece;  next  to  this  came  the 
natural  opposition  to  the  tyranny  of  the  British 
governor.  At  the  basis,  however,  lay  also 
sociologic  conditions  of  land-ownership  and 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  137 

of  agriculture,  since  the  land-owners  were 
mainly  foreigners  (Italians). 

The  conflict  between  the  Assembly  and  the 
vice-royalty  gradually  became  chronic  and 
steadily  more  unpleasant  for  the  central  gov- 
ernment in  London.  Despite  the  fact  that 
Gladstone,  in  terms  of  the  most  utter  cant, 
had  declared  in  May,  1861,  that  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  undertaking  would  be  "a  crime 
against  the  safety  of  Europe,"  it  nevertheless 
came  to  pass  on  March  29,  1864.  Thus  there 
came  to  an  end  a  British  protectorate  which 
is  characterized  by  all  commentators  and  his- 
torians as  a  chapter  of  the  most  extreme  despo- 
tism. 

England  contented  itself  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean with  retaining  the  island  of  Malta, 
which  it  took  from  the  French;  the  French, 
for  their  part,  had  no  legal  title  whatever  to 
the  possession  of  the  island. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

JAMAICA 

In  a  more  striking  manner  than  in  the 
Ionian  Islands  did  English  misrule  make  it- 
self noticeable  in  the  most  important  of  the 
crown  colonies  of  the  West  Indies.  In 
Jamaica,  it  is  true,  slavery  had  been  abolished 
in  1838,  but  the  oppression  of  the  negroes  had 
grown  heavier,  not  lighter.  In  October,  1865, 
the  unrest  eventuated  in  disturbances  of  a  na- 
ture more  serious  than  usual,  disturbances  in 
which  the  well  founded  complaints  of  the 
negroes  found  expression.  And  yet  the  whole 
affair  was  hardly  more  than  an  ordinary  riot. 
"So  evanescent  was  the  whole  movement  that 
it  is  to  this  day  a  matter  of  dispute  whether 
there  was  any  rebellion  at  all  .  .  .  or  whether 

138 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  139 

the  disturbances  were  not  the  extemporaneous 
work  of  a  discontented  and  turbulent  mob."1 
The  governor  proclaimed  military  law  over 
the  whole  district  with  the  exception  of  the 
city  of  Kingston.  In  Kingston  lived  a  negro 
named  Gordon,  who  had  a  small  business 
establishment  and  was  a  member  of  the  House 
of  Deputies  of  the  colony.  He  had  made  him- 
self prominent  there  as  an  advocate  of  the 
rights  of  the  negroes,  both  in  and  out  of  the 
House  of  Deputies,  in  an  energetic  but  thor- 
oughly lawful  manner.  He  was  soon  arrested, 
and,  since  martial  law  did  not  prevail  in 
Kingston  and  it  would  have  been  necessary  to 
bring  him  before  an  ordinary  civil  court,  he 
was  taken  to  another  district  and  brought  be- 
fore a  court-martial  composed  of  two  young 
marine  officers  and  a  subaltern  of  infantry. 
Gordon  was  accused  of  high  treason,  found 

'McCarthy,    I V,   p.    117    (Tauchnitz   cd.). 


140         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

guilty  and  sentenced  to  death.  As  the  fol- 
lowing day  was  Sunday,  the  judgment  was  not 
carried  out  until  Monday. 

"The  whole  of  the  proceedings  connected 
with  the  trial  of  Gordon  were  absolutely  il- 
legal ;  they  were  illegal  from  first  to  last.  .  .  . 
Every  step  in  it  was  a  separate  outrage  on  law. 
But  for  its  tragic  end  the  whole  affair  would 
seem  to  belong  to  the  domain  of  burlesque 
rather  than  to  that  of  sober  history."  1  Mc- 
Carthy goes  into  details  to  prove  this  and  sup- 
ports his  statements  by  reference  to  the  criti- 
cism of  Presiding  Justice  Cockburn,  who  later 
declared  that  nine-tenths  of  the  testimony  ad- 
mitted should  have  been  rejected  under  all 
rules  of  the  procedure  not  only  of  civil  but  of 
military  courts. 

"Meanwhile  the  carnival  of  repression  was 
going  on.    The  insurrection,  or  whatever  the 

1  McCarthy,   IV,   p.    121. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  141 

movement  was  which  broke  out  on  October 
nth,  was  over  long  before.  It  never  offered 
the  slightest  resistance  to  the  soldiers.  .  .  . 
An  armed  insurgent  was  never  seen  by  them. 
Nevertheless,  for  weeks  after,  the  hangings, 
the  floggings,  the  burnings  of  houses  were  kept 
up.  Men  were  hanged,  women  were  flogged 
merely  'suspect  of  being  suspect' "  '  Four 
hundred  and  thirty-nine  persons  were  killed, 
more  than  600  flogged,  a  thousand  houses  went 
up  in  flames.  Especially  effective  whips  were 
made  from  piano-wire.  A  commission  ap- 
pointed later  declared  that  "it  is  painful  to 
think  that  any  man  should  have  used  such 
an  instrument  for  the  torturing  of  his  fellow- 
creatures."2  The  report  of  the  commission 
was  given  out  in  April,  1866.  The  recall  of 
the  governor  followed,  although  public  opin- 


1  j<i.  [>.  123. 

3  McCarthy,  IV,  pp.   123-4. 


142  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

ion  was  divided.  Committees  for  and  against 
the  methods  used  against  the  Jamaicans  were 
formed.  On  both  sides  appear  the  best  known 
names  of  the  period  (the  mid- Victorian  era). 
Supporting  the  governor  were  Disraeli,  Ten- 
nyson, Kingsley,  Carlyle,  Dickens,  Ruskinj 
cudgels  were  taken  up  for  the  negroes  by  John 
Bright,  Herbert  Spencer,  Huxley,  Goldwin 
Smith.  The  leader  of  this  group  was  John 
Stuart  Mill.  Even  the  governor's  party  was 
not  inclined  to  justify  the  cruelties  and  the  ju- 
dicial murder  of  Gordon — at  least,  a  great 
many  would  not  go  so  far — but  they  brought 
all  reasons  to  bear  that  seemed  to  demand  the 
relentless  suppression  of  the  uprising.  The 
governor's  opponents,  on  the  other  hand,  laid 
special  stress  upon  the  assertion  that  the  upris- 
ing was  insignificant  and  had  already  been 
fully  put  down  when  the  reign  of  terror  be- 
gan.    Their  adversaries  replied  by  exalting 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  143 

the  moral  qualities  of  the  governor  and  attack- 
ing the  character  of  Gordon.  The  renowned 
naturalist,  Huxley,  "made  concerning  this  af- 
fair the  quiet  remark  that  he  knew  of  no  law 
authorizing  virtuous  persons  as  such  to  put  to 
death  less  virtuous  persons  as  such."  1 

1  Id.,  pp.  127-8. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

THE  WAR  OF  THE  SLAVE-OWNERS  IN  AMERICA 

The  traffic  in  negroes,  in  which  English  sea- 
traders  had  "earned"  so  many  millions,  was, 
as  is  well  known,  an  issue  of.the  North  Ameri- 
can Civil  War,  even  though  this  phase  of  the 
conflict  did  not  at  first  occupy  the  chief  place. 

The  English  Government  was  more  than 
once  upon  the  point  of  taking  sides  on  behalf 
of  the  slave-owners  of  the  South.  Public 
opinion — at  least  among  the  upper  classes, 
who  are  always  in  the  best  position  to  make 
their  opinions  prevail — was  decidedly  on  the 
side  of  the  Confederates.  This  was  partly  due 
to  aristocratic,  partly  to  liberal  and  free-trade 
grounds.  The  ethical  repulsion  to  slavery, 
whose  most  eloquent  advocate  was  the  fearless 

144 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  145 

John  Bright,  found  only  a  weak  response  or 
no  response  at  all  in  these  circles.  The  Times 
pointed  out  that  the  Bible  nowhere  expressly 
prohibits  slavery.  It  was  confidently  believed 
that  the  North  would  suffer  a  crushing  defeat. 
"The  influential  classes  were  heart  and  soul 
with  the  South."  In  like  manner,  Napoleon 
III  had  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  cause 
of  the  South  would  triumph  and  that  all  was 
over  forever  with  the  Union.  He  desired  also, 
jointly  with  the  English  Government,  to  sup- 
port the  Confederacy  through  recognition. 
"It  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  there  were  only 
two  European  states  which  entertained  this 
feeling  and  allowed  it  to  be  everywhere  un- 
derstood." x  These  were  England  and  France. 
Lincoln  and  his  friends  had  reckoned  upon 
the  sympathy  of  the  English  people  and  the 
English  Government.    They  were  bitterly  dis- 

1  McCarthy,    III,    p.    253. 


1 46  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

appointed  when  they  learned  that  their  tem- 
porary misfortune  was  mocked  at  by  English 
statesmen,  journalists  and  clergymen,  and  gen- 
erally by  the  "best  society,"  and  that  all  these 
circles  openly  desired  the  success  of  their  ene- 
mies. A  serious  conflict  arose  from  the  case  of 
the  English  merchantman  Trent,  which  was 
searched  by  a  cruiser  of  the  United  States.  It 
had  envoys  of  the  Southern  States  on  board, 
whom  the  captain  of  the  cruiser  made  prison- 
ers. There  was  great  excitement  in  London 
over  the  fact  that  the  plebeians  of  the  North- 
ern States  had  dared  to  imitate  the  practice 
followed  by  the  English  aristocracy  for  cen- 
turies— a  practice  that  had  led  to  the  system 
of  armed  neutrality  in  Europe  and  to  the  War 
of  1 812  with  the  United  States.  It  makes  a 
difference  whose  ox  is  gored.  President  Lin- 
coln soon  yielded  and  released  the  prisoners, 
but  the  affair  left  much  bitterness,  chiefly — 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  147 

according  to  McCarthy's  judgment — as  a  re- 
sult of  the  overbearing  way  in  which  the  Eng- 
lish Government  had  conducted  itself. 

Even  granting  that  England  played  here 
the  role  of  a  defender  of  the  rights  of  nations, 
there  soon  came  an  affair  which  gave  the 
United  States  grounds  for  complaint.  The 
cruiser  Alabama,  sailing  under  the  flag  of  the 
Confederacy,  captured  one  merchant  ship 
after  another  of  the  North.  In  doing  so,  it 
regularly  used  the  English  flag  to  deceive  its 
victims.  That  was  its  right,  under  the  rules 
of  naval  warfare.  But  the  Alabama  was,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  more  an  English  than  an 
American  ship,  and  the  same  was  true  of 
several  other  "Confederate"  cruisers.  They 
were  built  in  an  English  shipyard;  their  crews 
were  almost  exclusively  English;  the  cannons 
and  the  cannoneers  were  English,  and  the  lat- 
ter belonged  to  the  royal  naval  reserve  and 


ii48  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

were  in  the  pay  of  the  British  Government. 
The  British  Government  had  no  ears  for  the 
representations  of  the  Union's  envoy,  so  long, 
at  least,  as  it  was  believed  that  the  Union 
would  be  defeated.  And  this  belief  persisted 
until  the  victories  of  Grant  and  Meade  could 
no  longer  be  kept  secret.  Reports  of  these 
victories  were  received  in  London  with  great 
displeasure.  "In  some  of  the  clubs  there  was 
positive  indignation  that  such  things  should 
even  be  reported."  1  When  the  victory  of  the 
North  became  all  too  apparent,  there  was  a 
reversal  of  opinion.  The  laboring  class,  under 
the  influence  of  John  Bright  and  certain  other 
friends  of  the  Union's  cause,  had  been  on  the 
side  of  the  North  since  the  issuance  of  the 
Emancipation  Proclamation  by  Lincoln  (Sep- 
tember 22,  1862). 
The  Alabama  affair  was  for  years  a  subject 

1  McCarthy,   III,   p.   277. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  149 

of  dispute.  It  was  finally  submitted  to  a 
court  of  arbitration  which  met  in  Geneva. 
The  verdict  of  this  court  (September  15, 
1872)  held  England  liable  for  the  losses  occa- 
sioned by  the  Alabama  and  two  other  priva- 
teers. England  was  forced  to  pay  the  United 
S rates  an  indemnity  amounting,  with  interest, 
to  $15,500,000,  for  breach  of  neutrality. 

Thus  ended  the  participation — for  such  it 
was — of  the  English  Government  on  behalf  of 
the  slave-owners  of  America. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   INDIAN    MUTINY 

All  these  affairs  were,  in  respect  of  their  di- 
rect significance  for  the  British  World  Em- 
pire, not  to  be  compared  with  the  rebellion  in 
India  of  the  years  1857- 1859,  which,  under 
the  name  of  "the  Indian  Mutiny,"  is  described 
as  a  simple  revolt  of  mercenaries,  despite  the 
fact  that  it  was,  or  at  least  became,  much  more 
than  that.  It  meant  the  collapse  of  the  rule 
of  the  East  India  Company. 

It  is  still  disputed  in  England  whether  the 
annexations  of  Dalhousie  and  his  governmen- 
tal methods  were  the  cause  of  the  uprising  or 
not.  Most  striking  was  the  manner  in  which, 
in  gross  violation  of  treaties  solemnly  con- 
cluded, he  destroyed  the  Kingdom  of  Oudh, 

150 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  151 

whence  the  Bengalese  army  was  mainly  re- 
cruited. It  is  considered  certain  that  this  con- 
tributed to  an  important  degree  to  make  the 
British  domination  hated.  Everywhere  the 
English  had  disregarded  the  religious  feelings 
of  Hindus  as  well  as  of  Mohammedans,  and 
had  done  violence  to  the  prejudices  of  caste. 
Mutinies  of  the  native  mercenaries  were  as  old 
as  the  institution  of  paid  armies  itself.  The 
fear  that  they  might  be  employed  outside  the 
country  and  thus  lose  caste  worked  with  par- 
ticular force  upon  these  caste-feelings.  The 
pettv  war  which  England  carried  on  in  1856 
in  Persia  added  to  this  fear.  There  existed, 
moreover,  the  widespread  belief  that  British 
domination  in  India  was  to  last  for  a  hundred 
years,  and  it  was  in  1757,  just  100  years  earlier, 
that  the  great  victory  in  the  battle  by  Plessy 
had  given  Clive  domination  over  India. 
The  history  of  the  mutiny  is  a  history  of 


152  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

gruesome  atrocities  on  both  sides.  Its  final 
suppression  left  an  especially  deep  and  terri- 
ble impression  upon  the  feelings  of  Europe 
because  of  the  English  method  of  carrying  out 
the  death  sentence  by  binding  the  victims  to 
the  muzzles  of  cannons,  which  were  then 
fired.  This  humane  method  of  execution  had 
already  been  employed  upon  the  Lipaki  in 
1764.1 

After  the  mutiny  had  been  suppressed,  the 
question  as  to  its  causes  became  a  burning 
one.  Colonel  Malleson,  who,  supplementing 
Kaye's  work,  has  given  us  the  most  thorough 
historical  account  of  the  events,  answers  the 
question  by  declaring  that  the  principal  cause 
was  the  bad  faith  of  the  English  Government 
toward  the  Sepoys.  "The  Government  pun- 
ished the  Sepoys  for  declining  to  fulfil  a  con- 

1  As  early  as  1764  it  became  necessary  to  stamp  out  mutiny 
by  blowing  thirty  Sepoys  from  the  cannon's  mouth.  Enc.  Brit., 
XIV,   p.  446. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  153 

tract  which  the  Government  had  broken,"  he 
said.  This  occurred  in  1843,  and  in  1853  "the 
Government  most  unadvisedly  again  attempted 
another  breach  of  contract."  Lord  Dalhousie 
was  here  the  guilty  person.  His  "high-handed 
measures"  were  crowned  by  the  annexation  of 
Oudh.  "Of  these  acts,  of  the  attempt,  as  I 
have  termed  it,  to  disregard  the  silent  growth 
of  ages  and  to  force  Western  ideas  upon  an 
Eastern  people,  and  in  the  course  of  that  at- 
tempt to  trample  upon  prejudices  and  to  dis- 
regard obligations,  the  mutiny  was  the  too 
certain  consequence."  ■ 

'Malleson,    "History   of   the   Indian   Mutiny,"  vol.   Ill,   pp. 
472-476;   preface,  p.  viii. 


Fourth  Division  :  The  Newer  Imperialism 
CHAPTER  XVI 

EGYPT 

The  land  of  the  Pharaohs  has  been  an  apple 
of  discord  between  English  and  French  as- 
pirations for  conquest  since  the  French  Revo- 
lution. These  aspirations  have  served  directly 
the  ends  of  economic  and  financial  exploita- 
tion. Neither  because  of  this  nor  for  the  sake 
of  the  colonies  themselves  has  it  come  to  war 
between  the  two  powers  since  1815.  The  Eng- 
lish policy,  however,  succeeded  without  war 
in  making  France  more  and  more  dependent 
upon  England.  It  had  tamed  the  once  so 
powerful  and  so  feared  nation,  and  threw  as 
much  fodder  into  its  manger  as  seemed  neces- 
sary to  mollify  its  thirst  for  blood. 

154 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  155 

French  genius  and  French  technic  had 
planned  and  built  the  Suez  Canal.  When,  in 
1864,  Ferdinand  de  Lesseps  appealed  to  Lord 
Palmerston  to  stop  the  opposition  which  Eng- 
lish diplomacy  in  Constantinople  had  organ- 
ized against  the  project,  the  Minister  declared 
"that  in  the  opinion  of  the  British  Govern- 
ment the  canal  was  a  physical  impossibility, 
that  if  it  was  made  it  would  injure  British 
maritime  supremacy,  and  that  the  project  was 
merely  a  device  for  French  interference  in  the 
East."  Assuredly  a  fine  example  of  the  far- 
sightedness and  broadmindedness  of  British 
statesmanship,  which  still  sees  in  Palmerston 
its  typical  representative! 

Confirmation  by  the  Sultan  of  the  conces- 
sion was  not  obtained  until  1866.  In  the 
meantime  de  Lesseps  had  organized  a  stock 
company  for  the  building  of  the  canal,  which 
was  opened  in  November,  1869.    In  1875  Dis- 


156         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

raeli,  in  whom  the  financier  and  the  statesman 
were  admirably  joined,  bought  the  Khedive's 
176,602  shares  of  Suez  Canal  stock.  This 
marks  the  beginning  of  the  financial  and  ac- 
companying territorial  conquest  of  Egypt  by 
England.  The  state  stood  at  the  door  of  bank- 
ruptcy. To  avert  it  the  incubus  of  Anglo- 
French  financial  control  (the  Dual  Control) 
was  laid  upon  the  land.  In  the  year  1881 
came  an  uprising,  which  was  also  directed 
against  the  Turks,  under  the  leadership  of  the 
Egyptian  officer  Ahmed  Arabi.  In  the  words 
of  Lord  Cromer,  who  had  been  in  1878  a 
member  of  a  French  commission  and  who  be- 
came later  (1884)  consul-general  and  de  facto 
governor,  it  was  "a  genuine  revolt  against  mis- 
government."  The  movement  was  successful ; 
Arabi  became  Minister  of  War.  This  did  not 
suit  the  incubus.  English  and  French  ships 
appeared  in  Alexandria  to  protect  the  inter- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  157 

ests  of  the  creditor  states;  a  revolt  in  that  city, 
in  which  British  subjects  lost  their  lives,  fur- 
nished the  pretext  for  the  bombardment  of  the 
weak  outer  forts  on  July  11,  1882,  which  re- 
sulted in  increasing  the  anarchy. 

The  English  admiral  did  not  act  entirely 
upon  his  own  responsibility.  He  did  not  con- 
cern himself  about  the  law  of  nations,  but  back 
of  him  stood  his  Government,  which  now  held 
it  to  be  its  task  to  put  down  the  "rebellion." 
The  occupation  of  the  land  of  the  Nile  fol- 
lowed, which,  although  the  subjugation  of 
the  Sudan  did  not  come  until  much  later 
(1898),  soon  amounted  to  political  annexa- 
tion. France,  whose  Government  for  years 
insisted  that  Egypt  must  be  evacuated,  was 
eliminated  by  the  entente,  and  by  the  treaty 
of  1904,  which  was  equivalent  to  a  partition 
of  Northern  Africa.  "We  retain  Egypt,  you 
seize  .Morocco.     The  other  Powers  have  no 


158         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

business  either  here  or  there.  If  Germany 
should  perchance  concern  itself  about  its  com- 
mercial interests  in  Morocco,  Great  Britain 
will  protect  France." 

That  was  the  real  meaning  of  this  treaty. 
That  a  shadow  of  "right"  came  into  the  ques- 
tion neither  of  the  contracting  parties  has 
dared  to  assert.  The  only  right  was  that 
which  Shylock  claims. 

The  statesman  Gladstone  had  written  as 
long  ago  as  1877:  "Our  first  site  in  Egypt,  be 
it  by  larceny  or  be  it  by  emption,  will  be  the  al- 
most certain  egg  of  a  North  African  empire 
that  will  grow  and  grow  .  .  .  till  we  finally 
join  hands  across  the  equator  with  Natal  and 
Cape  Town,  to  say  nothing  of  the  Transvaal 
and  the  Orange  River  on  the  south,  or  of 
Abyssinia  or  Zanzibar  to  be  swallowed  by 
way  of  viaticum  on  our  journey."  1 

1  Gladstone's  "Gleanings,"  IV,   p.    357. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  159 

This  same  Gladstone  had,  as  Prime  Minis- 
ter, the  task  of  defending  the  bombardment 
of  Alexandria.  John  Bright,  who  was  a  mem- 
ber of  his  cabinet,  resigned  because  of  the 
affair.  Goldwin  Smith  (from  1858  to  1866 
professor  of  modern  history  at  Oxford,  later 
a  resident  of  Canada)  wrote  to  him:  "This 
is  a  war  of  bondholders."  That  was  also 
B right's  conception.  As  a  member  of  the  cab- 
inet he  had  authorized  the  bombardment,  and 
the  thought  oppressed  him  greatly.  The  im- 
pulse had  come  from  Joseph  Chamberlain,  at 
that  time  still  a  Radical.  A  fearless  and  tire- 
less advocate  of  decent  and  upright  treatment 
of  the  Egyptians  was  Wilfrid  Scaven  Blunt, 
who  had  long  lived  in  Egypt  and  was  at  the 
center-point  of  the  occurrences  of  1882.     He 

ijoyed  the  complete  confidence  of  Arabi, 
whom  he  describes  as  a  noble  enthusiast  and  a 
true    Moslem    believer.      Bismarck    termed 


160         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

Arabi  a  powerful  factor  with  whom  one  must 
reckon.  General  Gordon,  whose  tragic  fate 
in  Khartoum  was  a  consequence  of  the  com- 
plications in  the  Sudan  that  followed  the  occu- 
pation of  Egypt,  wrote  a  letter  of  approval  to 
Blunt  from  Cape  Town  on  August  3,  1882,  at 
the  height  of  the  publicistic  excitement  of  the 
year.  The  letter  makes  merry  over  the  secrecy 
of  the  then  Secretary  of  State,  Sir  Charles 
Dilke,  and  says:  "Could  things  have  ended 
worse  if  he  had  said  everything?  I  think  not. 
No  more  control,  no  more  employees  draw- 
ing £373,000  a  year — no  more  influence  of 
consuls-general,  a  nation  hating  us — no  more 
Tewfik — no  more  interest — a  bombarded 
town,  Alexandria — these  are  the  results  of  the 
grand  secret  diplomacy.  ...  As  for  Arabi, 
whatever  may  become  of  him  individually,  he 
will  live  for  centuries  in  the  people.  They 
will  never  become  'your  obedient  servants' 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  161 

again." x  Blunt  considered  it  necessary, 
twenty-five  years  after  the  occurrences,  to  sup- 
plement the  earlier  justifications  of  his  course 
by  writing  a  book,  which  at  the  outset  con- 
tains many  interesting  documents,  among 
them  several  letters  from  Ahmed  Arabi.  In  a 
preface  to  the  book,  written  in  1895,  Blunt 
says :  "It  may  be  also  that  the  Egyptian  ques- 
tion, though  now  quiescent,  will  reassert  itself 
unexpectedly  in  some  urgent  form  hereafter, 
requiring  of  Englishmen  a  new  examination 
of  their  position  there,  political  and  moral." 
It  was  to  this  end  that  he  desired  to  contribute 
the  material  he  had  collected.  In  a  later 
"Foreword,"  written  in  1907,  he  declares  that 
for  this  purpose  "it  is  necessary  that  they 
should  first  have  set  before  them  the  past  as  it 
really  was,  and  not  as  it  has  been  presented  to 

'Wilfrid  Scavcn  Blunt,  "Secret  History  of  the  English  Occu- 
pation of  Egypt"    (1907),  p.  28. 


162  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

them  so  long  by  the  fallacious  documents  of 
their  official  Blue  Books."  He  refers  to  the 
fact  that  Lord  Cromer  was  in  Cairo  during  a 
part  of  the  revolutionary  period.  He  sets  for 
himself  the  task,  "to  give  a  complete  exposure 
in  detail  of  the  whole  drama  of  financial  in- 
trigue and  political  weakness  as  it  was  at  the 
time  revealed  to  me."  A  part  of  the  book  is 
made  up  of  entries  in  the  author's  diary. 
These  are  very  gloomy  over  the  future  of  his 
country.  "England's  decay  rests  upon  causes 
far  more  general  than  any  one  man  or  party 
of  men  can  be  responsible  for.  We  fail  be- 
cause we  are  no  longer  honest,  no  longer  just, 
no  longer  gentlemen."  *  Blunt  evidently  be- 
lieves also  that  at  that  time  the  honesty  and 
justice  of  the  English  policy,  even  if  not  per- 
fect, nevertheless  stood  much  higher  at  an 
earlier  period. 

1  Blunt,   p.    92. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  163 

His  views  have  naturally  been  severely  at- 
tacked. The  acknowledged  authority  con- 
cerning modern  Egypt  and  the  English  con- 
quest is  the  two-volume  work  of  Lord  Cromer, 
"Modern  Egypt."  With  all  appreciation  of 
this  excellent  work,  however,  one  must  do 
Blunt  the  justice  of  saying  that  Cromer  is  at 
a  disadvantage  insofar  as  he  did  not  live  in 
Egypt  during  the  critical  period.  Lord  Cro- 
mer brings  into  the  discussion  the  words  of 
Professor  Sayce,  the  renowned  authority  on 
Semitic  languages:  "Those  who  have  been 
in  the  East  and  have  tried  to  mingle  with  the 
native  population  know  well  how  utterly  im- 
possible it  is  for  the  European  to  look  at  the 
world  with  the  same  eyes  as  the  Oriental.  For 
a  while,  indeed,  the  European  may  fancy  that 
he  and  the  Oriental  understand  one  another, 
but  sooner  or  later  a  time  comes  when  he  is 
suddenly  awakened  from  his  dream,  and  finds 


1 64  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

himself  in  the  presence  of  a  mind  which  is  as 
strange  to  him  as  would  be  the  mind  of  an 
inhabitant  of  Saturn."  * 

Perhaps  for  the  observation  of  certain  oc- 
currences the  rule  will  also  apply  that  it  is 
exactly  in  the  Orient  that  one  must  have  ex- 
perienced these  things  in  order  to  understand 
them.  Furthermore,  Blunt,  a  wealthy  man, 
lived  in  Egypt  as  a  private  gentleman,  while 
Cromer  (formerly  Sir  Evelyn  Baring)  was 
there  only  under  commission  of  the  English 
Government. 

Meanwhile,  let  us  rather  reserve  our  judg- 
ment. We  can,  however,  accept  as  correct 
those  things  wherein  Cromer  and  Blunt  agree. 
Even  Cromer  confirms,  at  the  close  of  his 
work,  with  respect  to  Egypt,  what  was  said  of 
India  soon  after  the  annexation  of  the  Punjab : 

1  Prof.  Sayce,  "The  Higher  Criticism  and  the  Monuments," 
P-   558- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  165 

''We  are  nowhere  beloved."  He  terms  it  a 
"lack  of  gratitude  of  a  foreign  nation  for 
foreign  benefices,"  but  says  that  such  ingrati- 
tude is  almost  as  old  as  history.  In  another 
place1  Cromer  himself  refers  to  Seeley's  as- 
sertion that  "it  were  very  rash  to  assume  that 
any  gratitude  which  may  here  and  there  have 
been  awakened  by  our  Government  can  be 
more  than  sufficient  to  offset  the  dissatisfac- 
tion which  we  have  caused  among  those  whom 
we  have  deprived  of  respect  and  influence." 

But  dissatisfaction  fills  not  only  the  former 
rules,  but  also  the  rulers.  Foreign  rule  is  in 
itself  oppressive.  It  is  felt  as  a  burden,  even 
when  it  brings  welcome  reforms.  The 
dissatisfaction  is  increased  and  sharpened 
through  occurrences  showing  that  the  foreign 
rulers  unite  a  lack  of  understanding  of  native 

1  Edinb.  Review,  Jan.,   1908,  reprinted  in  "Political   and  Lit- 
erary Essays"   (1913).  P-   J3- 


166  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

customs  with  a  severity  toward  crimes  grow- 
ing out  of  an  attempt  to  observe  these  customs. 
Such  an  occurrence  in  Egypt  was  the  case  of 
Denishwai.  Pigeons  may  be  shot  in  the  Nile 
Land  only  with  the  permission  of  the  village 
"omdeh,"  or  head  man,  for  the  inhabitants 
look  upon  their  half-tame  pigeons  as  valuable 
property  and  care  for  them  with  great  assid- 
uity. The  English  officers  enjoy  shooting, 
pigeons.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  a  party  of 
fifty  English  officers,  on  a  march  through  the 
delta  of  the  Nile,  was  found  shooting  pigeons 
and  detained.  Their  weapons  were  taken 
away  from  them,  a  shotgun  was  discharged 
and  wounded  several  persons,  among  them  a 
woman.  A  panic  followed  and  the  English- 
men were  badly  beaten.  One  died  later  of 
sunstroke,  but  his  death  was  ascribed  to  his 
injuries.  An  extraordinary  court,  which 
existed    for    such    cases,    immediately    con- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  167 

demned  four  Egyptians  to  death,  several  to 
long  terms  of  imprisonment  and  seven  to  re- 
ceive fifty  lashes  each.  The  executions  and 
lashings  were  carried  out  forthwith. 

Sir  Edward  Grey  had  just  become  Minister 
of  Foreign  Affairs  in  the  new  Liberal  govern- 
ment. He  not  only  defended  the  drastic  ver- 
dict, but  on  July  6th  issued  a  warning  against 
further  outbreaks  of  fanaticism  in  Egypt, 
which  might  possibly  make  extreme  measures 
necessary.  To  this  warning  Mustapha  Pasha 
Kamel,  the  new  leader  of  the  Egyptian  Na- 
tional party,  replied  that  he,  in  common  with 
his  fellow-countrymen,  believed  that  Sir  Ed- 
ward Grey  had  spoken  in  Parliament  for  no 
other  purpose  than  to  choke  off  the  discussion 
of  the  dreadful  reality  of  Denishwai.  But,  he 
asked,  is  it  worthy  of  England,  of  the  land 
that  desires  to  be  the  representative  of  human- 
ity, justice  and  civilization,  to  approve  and 


i68  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

adopt  as  its  own  the  acts  of  those  who  give  to 
the  world  the  melancholy  and  frightful  drama 
of  barbarism — the  executions  of  Denishwai? 

The  further  history  of  the  English  usurpa- 
tion in  Egypt  will  perhaps  furnish  a  sharp 
answer  to  this  question.  There  has  been  no 
lack  of  strong  opposition  and  relentless  criti- 
cism of  Sir  Edward  Grey  in  the  House  of 
Commons  and  in  his  own  party. 

A  word  may  here  be  said  of  the  conflicts 
for  the  Sudan,  which  formed  a  part  of  the 
conquest  of  Egypt.  The  tragic  fate  of  the 
not,ed  General  Gordon  made  a  deep  impres- 
sion upon  his  contemporaries,  and  also  out- 
side of  England.  How  far  his  Government 
was  responsible  for  his  death  does  not  concern 
us  here.  For  the  rest,  however,  it  suffices  to 
quote  a  striking  sentence  of  the  great  philoso- 
pher, Herbert  Spencer,  written  by  him  not 
long  before  his  death  in  1903.   He  said :  "Love 


WARLIKE    ENGLAND  169 

of  country  is  not  fostered  in  me  on  remember- 
ing that  when,  after  our  Prime  Minister  had 
declared  that  we  were  bound  in  honor  to  the 
Khedive  to  reconquer  the  Sudan,  we,  after 
the  reconquest,  forthwith  began  to  administer 
it  in  the  name  of  the  Queen  and  the  Khedive, 
practically  annexing  it."  In  the  same  short 
article  we  find  the  sentence:  "Contemplation 
of  the  acts  by  which  England  has  acquired 
over  eighty  possessions — settlements,  colonies, 
protectorates,  etc. — does  not  arouse  feelings  of 
satisfaction."  ! 

1  Article  on  "Patriotism,"  in  "Facts  and  Comments,"  pp.  88-89. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE   BOER  WAR 

The  conquest  of  the  Transvaal  and  the 
Orange  Free  State  was  for  the  Boers,  who 
were  thus  robbed  of  the  last  abiding  places  of 
their  political  independence,  the  conclusion  of 
a  "Century  of  Wrong."  (This  was  the  title 
of  a  pamphlet  issued  by  the  former  Secre- 
tary of  State,  F.  W.  Reitz.) 

The  Cape  Colony,  the  center-point  of  Brit- 
ish dominion  in  South  Africaj  was  part  of 
the  booty  secured  on  the  occasion  of  the  bat- 
tles against  the  French  Republic  and  later 
against  Napoleon.  At  first  in  1795,  then  in 
1806  and  finally  in  1814  Great  Britain  laid 
hand  upon  the  old  Dutch  settlement.  "The 
British  title  to  Cape  Colony  is  based  upon 
conquest,  treaty  and  purchase.     The  wishes 

170 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  171 

of  the  inhabitants  were  not  consulted  and 
among  them  resentment  was  felt  at  the  way 
in  which  their  future  was  thus  disposed  of," 
reports  the  Englishman  Frank  R.  Cana.1  He 
knows  perfectly  that  it  was  only  conquest  that 
grounded  a  real  "legal  title." 

The  repugnance  to  the  English  rule,  which 
in  this  case  holds  in  subjection  not  Asiatics,  not 
negroes  nor  colonists  of  English  descent,  but 
descendants  of  a  neighboring  European  land, 
has  increased  in  proportion  as  the  rule  has 
been  extended.  The  events  contributing 
thereto  are  still  fresh  in  the  memory.  They 
include  the  defeat  of  the  English  at  Majuba 
Hill  (1881)  ;  the  organization  of  the  African- 
der League  (1882)  ;  the  discovery  of  the  dia- 
mond fields  and  gold  mines;  the  systematic 
procedure  of  Cecil  Rhodes  and  his  Chartered 
Company;  the  policy  of  President  Kruger; 

eye.   Brit.,   article  "South   Africa,"  XXV,  p.  470. 


172  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

the  complaints  of  the  Uitlander  in  the  Trans- 
vaal; the  forcible  invasion  of  Dr.  Jameson 
(the  Jameson  raid) ,  which  Cecil  Rhodes,  then 
Minister  in  the  Cape  Colony,  had  instigated; 
and  the  lasting,  fearful  results  of  this  crime. 
"It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  events  accom- 
panying this  raid  greatly  embittered  the 
Dutch  element  in  the  Cape  Colony  and  in- 
fluenced its  later  attitude  against  the  Trans- 
vaal Boers."1  In  the  year  1897  Sir  Alfred 
Milner,  a  passionately  ruthless  imperialist, 
was  appointed  Viceroy  for  South  Africa  and 
Governor  of  the  Cape  Colony.  This  meant 
that  the  policy  of  force,  which  had  for  a  time 
been  in  desuetude,  was  to  be  taken  up  again, 
for  back  of  Milner  stood  Joseph  Chamber- 
lain as  Colonial  Secretary  of  State.  From 
the  very  beginning  he  handled  the  Transvaal 
Republic  as  a  state  bound  to  obedience,  al- 

1Encyc.  Brit.,  ibid. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  173 

though,  under  the  treaty  of  1884,  the  Trans- 
vaal's standing  in  international  law  was  only 
in  a  limited  degree  one  of  dependence,  after 
it  had  freed  itself  from  its  incorporation  in 
1877  into  the  British  Empire.  The  three- 
year  war  (1899-1902)  followed,  with  the  final 
subjection  and  regulation  of  the  new  colonies, 
the  introduction  of  Chinese  mine  laborers  un- 
der conditions  which  had  the  effect  of  making 
slaves  of  them,  and,  finally,  the  granting  of 
self-government  and  the  constitution  of  the 
South  African  Union  as  one  of  the  members 
of  the  British  Empire. 

The  war  itself  brought  at  first  severe  de- 
feats for  the  British  army.  Later  the  army 
was  able  to  report  victories.  "England  sent 
during  the  whole  course  of  the  war  nearly 
450,000  men  to  South  Africa.  Of  these,  about 
340,000  came  from  the  mother  country,  the 
n  India,  the  colonies  and  South  Africa 


174         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

itself.  The  entire  righting  force  brought  into 
the  field  by  the  Boers  was  considerably  less 
than  75,000  men."  *  McCarthy  is  of  the  opin- 
ion that  in  view  of  the  relative  strength  of  the 
forces  (6  to  1),  it  were  impossible  for  any 
poet  to  grow  enthusiastic  about  the  victory, 
and  that  if  it  had  been  a  war  between  two 
foreign  powers,  the  sympathy  of  the  English 
folk  would  most  certainly  have  been  on  the 
side  of  the  weaker. 

The  sympathy  of  the  entire  non-English 
civilized  world  was  on  the  side  of  the  weaker 
to  a  degree  that  signified  a  severe  moral  de- 
feat for  the  English  world-policy.  The  cant 
phrases  with  which  the  war  of  conquest  was 
launched  had  no  currency  outside  the  English 
borders;  no  one  accepted  them;  they  were  cast 
back  into  the  faces  of  Chamberlain,  Milner 
and  their  lieutenants. 

'McCarthy,  "History  of  Our  Own  Times,"  VII,  p.  126. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  175 

As  long  ago  as  1850  Queen  Victoria  "ac- 
quainted the  Prime  Minister  that  she  could 
not  observe  without  pain  that  England  was 
generally  detested."  Fifty  years  later,  after 
she  had  celebrated  her  diamond  jubilee,  she 
would  have  found  much  more  reason  for  this 
pain.  In  her  place  spoke  the  great  men  of 
the  land,  men  belonging  as  well  to  the  Govern- 
ment as  to  the  opposition,  although  the  latter 
did  not  dare  more  than  a  weak  protest  against 
the  war. 

On  October  31st,  1900,  the  Earl  of  Kim- 
berley  referred  to  the  fact  that  "we  are  very 
generally  hated  by  foreigners." 

On  December  16,  1901,  the  Earl  of  Rose- 
bery,  Prime  Minister  in  1895-6,  testified  that 
"there  is  no  parallel  to  the  hatred  and  ill- 
will  with  which  we  are  regarded  almost 
unanimously  by  the  peoples  of  Europe." 

Lord   Salisbury  himself,   the   head   of   the 


176  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

—-  —  ,—  i      -      ..        —   ■■-iiimiii.     i—    ■      ii         ■ i  — ■    --■■— I— — I— — — — ^^^^—^— 

Government,  declared  on  May  9,  1900,  "that 
this  country  has  been  cast  out  with  reproach 
in  almost  every  literature  of  Europe."  And 
in  a  later  speech  (on  June  5,  1902),  he  raised 
the  question  "whether  the  root  of  bitterness 
against  England,  which  he  was  wholly  un- 
able to  explain,  might  not  indicate  some  deep- 
set  feeling  with  which  at  a  later  date  we  shall 
have  to  reckon." 

In  the  year  1902  there  appeared  also  the 
interesting  work  of  the  Honorable  George 
Peel,  "The  Enemies  of  England,"  from  which 
the  foregoing  citations  are  taken.  He  thinks 
"that  this  feeling  has  been  prevalent  as  a  gen- 
eral factor  in  Europe  since  the  latter  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century." 

He  is  assuredly  right,  for  this  hostility  has 
always  had  its  seat  in  France.  From  the  say- 
ing of  Minister  Cardinal  Bernis  (about  1750) , 
"England  will  become  the  despot  of  the  uni- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  177 

verse,"  down  to  the  book  of  Jean  de  la  Pou- 
laine  (1902),  "The  Colossus  with  Feet  of 
Clay,"  what  a  record  of  expressions  of  French 
repugnance,  French  ridicule  and  French 
hatred  towards  England  could  be  adduced! 

Peel  recognized  quite  correctly  the  cause 
and  kernel  of  the  "profound,  widespread  and 
old  standing"  hostile  feeling  which  England 
has  brought  upon  itself  on  the  Continent.  He 
saw  it  in  the  fact  that  England's  policy,  "at  a 
certain  stage  of  its  progress"  had  regularly 
opposed  itself  to  every  power  "that  aspired  to 
the  primacy  of  the  world."  "Apart  from  all 
bitterness,"  he  said,  "this  remains  the  real  mat- 
ter between  us  and  our  Continental  critics, 
and  to  the  question  whether  this  resistance  of 
ours  was  justified  we  must  content  ourselves 
to  stand  or  fall  upon  the  answer  given  by  the 
views  of  impartial  minds." 

When  he  answers  then  that  "our  statesmen 


178  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

have  continuously  sought  our  safety,  which  in 
every  important  epoch  of  European  affairs 
has  been  identical  with  the  safety  of  Europe," 
this  is  not  cant  (to  which  this  author  is  not 
addicted),  but  an  undependable  generaliza- 
tion from  the  affairs  of  Louis  XIV  and  Napo- 
leon, of  whom  the  latter  in  reality  fought  more 
against  the  supremacy  of  England  than  for 
the  supremacy  of  France. 

To  return  to  the  Boer  War,  this  conflict  was 
decided  upon  solely  because  of  the  imperial- 
istic interests  of  England,  and  behind  these 
stood,  as  always,  the  powerful  commercial 
interests. 

W.  H.  Lecky,  the  historian,  politically  Con- 
servative and  Unionist,  wrote  in  1900  a  pam- 
phlet entitled  "Moral  Aspects  of  the  South 
African  War."  It  is  throughout  a  defense 
of  the  English  policy  and  a  severe  attack  upon 
the  government  of  the  Transvaal.    Yet  Lecky 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  179 

finds  himself  compelled  to  make  the  following 
admissions: 

"I  am  far  from  contending  that  our  con- 
duct in  other  respects  was  impeccable.  There 
are  several  pages  in  the  history  of  the  early 
English  dealings  in  the  Transvaal  which  are 
by  no  means  to  our  credit.  A  mining  popula- 
tion like  that  which  had  its  center  in  Johan- 
nesburg is  never  of  the  most  desirable  order, 
and  in  the  present  generation  financial  specu- 
lation has  mixed  far  too  much,  both  in  Eng- 
land and  in  Africa,  with  South  African  poli- 
tics. Party  spirit  runs  violently  at  the  Cape, 
and  if  there  was  a  Dutch  party  aiming  at  com- 
plete ascendancy,  there  was  also  an  English 
party  which  was  violent,  arrogant  and  unscru- 
pulous. The  raid,  though  it  was  undoubtedly 
preceded  by  gross  misgovcrnment,  was  both 
a  great  folly  and  a  great  crime.  Our  Govern- 
ment had  nothing  to  say  to  it,  and  the  men 


180  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

who  took  part  in  it  were  tried  and  punished; 
but  a  section  of  the  British  public — shame- 
fully misled  by  a  very  important  part  of  the 
British  press — adopted  an  attitude  towards  it 
which  added  largely  and  most  naturally  to  the 
deep  distrust  of  England  that  prevailed  in  the 
Transvaal." 

Lecky  declares  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that 
Rhodes  prepared  and  planned  the  raid. 

Herbert  Spencer's  verdict  is  short  and 
sharp.  He  says:  "After  promising,  through 
the  mouths  of  two  colonial  ministers,  not  to 
interfere  in  the  internal  affairs  of  the  Trans- 
vaal, we  proceeded  to  insist  on  certain  elec- 
toral arrangements,  and  made  resistance  the 
excuse  for  a  desolating  war."  1 

But  the  sharpest  criticism  of  those  respons- 
ible for  the  Boer  War  came  from  the  British 
nation  itself,  when,  three  years  after  the  end 

1  "Facts  and   Comments,"  p.   89. 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  181 

of  the  war,  it  placed  the  reins  of  government 
by  a  mighty  majority  in  the  hands  of  those 
men  who,  like  Campbell  Bannerman,  Lloyd 
George  and  Asquith,  had  protested  loudly 
against  the  war  and  against  the  manner  in 
which  it  was  carried  on.  At  the  time  they 
were  abused  and  ridiculed  as  "Little  Eng- 
enders" and  "Pro-Boers." 

Whether  it  was  in  accordance  with  the  will 
of  this  majority  that  Sir  Edward  Grey  became 
Foreign  Minister  in  the  new  Liberal  cabinet 
may  be  doubted  with  good  reason. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

PERSIA 

Under  the  title,  "The  Strangling  of  Per- 
sia," a  distinguished  American  public  man 
has  pictured  the  modern  history  of  this  coun- 
try. Mr.  Morgan  Shuster  was  as  no  other 
man  in  a  position  to  give  an  impartial  and 
faithful  report  of  the  events  which  he  charac- 
terizes concisely  in  this  title. 

In  the  endeavors  to  subjugate  and  exploit 
Persia,  and  to  these  ends  to  throw  it  into  con- 
fusion and  anarchy,  Russia  played  the  leading 
role  throughout  almost  the  entire  nineteenth 
century.  Great  Britain,  drawn  into  Afghanis- 
tan through  its  rule  of  might  over  India,  was 
in  turn  compelled  to  direct  its  eyes  toward 
Persia.    Violent  points  of  friction  developed 

182 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  183 

as  early  as  1839,  and  came  to  a  declaration  of 
war  on  November  1,  1856.  The  question  at 
issue  was  the  possession  of  Herat  (in  Afghan- 
istan), which  England  denied  to  the  Shah. 
From  this  time  on,  England — after  a  quickly 
won  victory — above  all  laid  claim  to  the  ex- 
clusive commercial  supremacy  over  the  Per- 
sian Gulf.  At  the  beginning  of  the  new  cen- 
tury (1902-1907)  the  rivalry  between  Eng- 
land and  Russia  first  became  acute,  but  a  com- 
promise followed  during  the  confusion  of  the 
Persian  revolution,  which  was  immediately 
followed  by  the  proclamation  of  a  modern 
constitution.  On  August  31,  1907,  the  Anglo- 
Russian  convention  was  signed,  which  in  na- 
ture and  effect  amounted  to  a  partition  of 
Persia. 

Sir  Edward  Grey  advocated  this  treaty  of 
compromise  in  the  House  of  Commons.  A 
London  periodical,  which  enjoys  great  respect 


1 84  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

because  of  its  genius  and  frank  courage  in 
openly  criticizing  any  action  of  the  govern- 
ment, had  this  to  say  of  the  affair: 

"Sir  Edward  Grey  has  not  merely  gone  out 
of  his  way  to  make  a  wholly  gratuitous  defense 
of  the  action  which  Russia  is  now  taking;  he 
has  explicitly  sanctioned  and  adopted  the 
stealthy  extension  of  the  Anglo-Russian  com- 
pact which  underlies  the  whole  of  the  Russian 
aggression.  So  far  as  the  wording  of  that 
treaty  goes,  it  provides  for  the  division  of  Per- 
sia into  economic  spheres,  within  which  each 
power  binds  itself  not  to  compete  with  the 
other  for  concessions.  We  have  never  thought 
that  arrangement  compatible  with  the  integ- 
rity and  independence  of  Persia,  and  we  have 
always  argued  that  it  would  be  stretched,  and 
must  be  stretched,  into  a  political  partition. 
At  length  the  avowal  has  been  made,  and 
made  apparently  without  any  consciousness 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  185 

that  the  terms  of  the  compact  have  been  left 
behind.  The  word  'political'  has  been  subtly 
introduced  by  Sir  Edward  Grey  to  describe 
the  character  of  the  particular  interests  which 
each  power  reserves  to  itself  in  its  own  sphere. 
When  once  that  word  is  used,  the  independ- 
ence of  Persia  is  gone  and  its  partition  vir- 
tually accomplished. 

"But  if  a  little  country  may  be  invaded  by  a 
great  power  because  a  foreign  official  in  its 
service  has  ventured  to  write  a  reasoned  and 
temporate  letter  to  the  Times,  in  reply  to  edi- 
torial attacks  of  semi-official  British  and  Rus- 
sian newspapers,  we  must  revise  all  our  con- 
ceptions of  international  intercourse.  ...  It  is 
a  case  of  the  wolf  and  the  lamb,  so  flagrant 
and  so  cynical  that  one  is  hardly  tempted  to 
analyze  it  further." 

And  in  a  second  article  the  same  publicist 
makes  the  following  observations  concerning 


186         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

the  affair,  which  are  to-day  of  most  especial 
interest: 

"Disastrous  and  foolish  though  we  believe 
this  policy  to  be,  we  do  not  call  it  unintelli- 
gible. It  is  a  consequence,  and  one  of  the 
worst  consequences,  of  Sir  Edward  Grey's 
European  policy.  One  simple  and  elementary 
principle  has  governed  it  from  the  first — his 
dread  lest  this  or  the  other  power  might  be 
drawn  into  what  he  has  called  'the  orbit'  of 
German  diplomacy.  Year  in,  year  out,  we 
have  been  paying,  chiefly  in  other  people's 
goods,  for  the  satisfaction  of  keeping  certain 
powers  from  coming  to  any  intimate  under- 
standing with  Germany.  The  French  side 
of  the  account  is  represented  by  the  Moroccan 
transaction  and  its  sequels.  To  Russia  we 
have  given  a  free  hand  over  the  greater  part 
of  Persia.  It  was  a  large  price  to  pay  for 
anything." 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  187 

The  author  sums  up  his  opinion  of  the  Eng- 
lish foreign  policy  in  the  following  sentences: 

"We  are  playing  a  continental  role  without 
continental  resources,  and  from  a  great  ambi- 
tion based  on  unsuitable  means  there  must 
issue  in  the  end  either  the  humiliation  of  a 
surrender  or  the  disaster  of  a  defeat."  1 

1  The  Nation. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE  WORLD  WAR  OF  1914 

On  the  evening  of  August  2d  the  Belgian 
Government  faced  the  necessity  of  deciding 
whether  it  would  take  sides  with  Germany  or 
France.  But  Belgium's  decision  had  been 
made  long  before.  Belgium  was  a  member 
of  the  entente  cordiale  between  France  and 
Great  Britain.1  This  entente  ostensibly 
meant  an  assurance  of  English  support  for 
France.  In  reality  it  meant  that  France  and 
Belgium  had  become  tools  of  the  English 
policy.  Belgium  was,  in  the  words  of  a  Swed- 
ish military  writer,  "the  United  Kingdom's 

1The  documents  showing  that  Belgium  had  long  ceased  to 
be  a  neutral  State  have  now  (January,  1915)  been  published 
in  a  pamphlet  which  bears  the  title,  "Die  belgische  Neu- 
tralitat"  (The  Belgian  Neutrality,  published  by  George 
Stilke,  Berlin). 

188 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  189 

outpost  on  the  Continent."  1  It  played  this 
role  in  the  guise  of  an  independent  State  whose 
neutrality  had  been  guaranteed  in  1839  by  the 
European  concert,  a  concert  in  which  Great 
Britain  played  first  violin. 

Trusting  to  English  and  French  support, 
the  Belgian  Government  placed  itself  in  op- 
position to  the  request  of  the  German  Govern- 
ment that  it  assume  a  friendly  neutrality  and 
permit  the  entry  into  Belgian  territory  of  Ger- 
man troops. 

The  border  was  crossed  on  August  4th. 
The  German  Government  had  in  its  posses- 
sion dependable  reports  over  the  projected 
advance  of  French  troops  along  the  Meuse, 
in  the  district  of  Givct-Namur — reports  that 
left  room  for  no  doubts  concerning  France's 
intention  to  advance  through  Belgian  territory 
against  Germany.    The  German  Empire  was 

'  Svenska  Dagblad,  October   15,   1914. 


190  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

at  war  with  Russia  and  France,  and  its  ally, 
Austria-Hungary,  also  had  Servia  as  an  oppo- 
nent. In  Petersburg — according  to  a  report 
of  the  Belgian  charge  d'affaires  to  the  Belgian 
Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs — there  was  a  firm 
conviction  even  before  July  30th — indeed,  the 
assurance  had  been  received — that  England 
would  stand  by  France.  "This  support" — 
writes  the  Belgian  envoy — "is  of  extraordi- 
nary weight  and  has  contributed  not  a  little  to 
give  the  war  party  the  upper  hand." 

Of  all  the  documents  concerning  the  cause 
of  the  war  that  have  become  known,  this  is  the 
one  that  illuminates  the  situation  the  most 
sharply. 

England's  participation  in  the  World  War 
was  assured  in  all  circumstances.  Indeed,  it 
was  a  matter  of  course,  for  even  though  Eng- 
land was,  in  the  sequence  of  events,  the  last 
factor,  it  was  the  first  factor  in  bringing  these 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  191 

events  about.  No  other  State  had  such  a  tre- 
mendous material  interest  as  England  in  tram- 
pling the  German  power  down  through  a 
European  coalition.  For  this  reason  the  neu- 
trality of  England  could  have  been  secured 
through  no  concession,  not  even  through  the 
concession  not  to  violate  the  Belgian  neutral- 
ity. 

Only  when  it  is  willing  to  injure  itself  does 
a  belligerent  power  make  concessions  to  a 
power  whose  hostility  is  assured. 

For  this  reason  it  was  surely,  in  the  words 
of  the  message  of  the  Secretary  of  State  on 
August  2d,  "a  requirement  of  self-preservation 
for  Germany  to  anticipate  an  attack  by 
France."  As  strongly  as  moral  grounds  de- 
manded that  Belgium's  neutrality  be  not  vio- 
lated, the  position  of  self-defense  against  a 
mighty  coalition  of  powers  in  which  Germany 
found  itself  not  only  justified,  but  demanded 


1 92         WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

the  breach  of  an  international  treaty  which 
was  nothing  but  a  weapon  in. the  hands  of  an 
enemy  who  would  have  been  an  enemy  under 
all  circumstances. 

This  breach  was  followed  immediately  by 
the  English  declaration  of  war.  The  British 
Ambassador  was  "instructed  to  say  that  His 
Majesty's  Government  feel  bound  to  take  all 
steps  in  their  power  to  uphold  the  neutrality 
of  Belgium  and  the  observance  of  a  treaty  to, 
which  Germany  is  as  much  a  party  as  our- 
selves." (Correspondence  respecting  the  Eu- 
ropean Crisis,  Cd.  7467,  No.  159.) 

That  England  was  in  all  circumstances  the 
enemy  of  the  German  Empire  is  proved  by  the 
memorandum  which  Sir  Edward  Grey  on  Au- 
gust 2d — that  is  to  say,  before  any  decision 
concerning  Belgium — handed  to  the  French 
Ambassador.  (Correspondence  respecting 
the  European  Crisis,  No.  148.)     In  this  it  is 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  193 

said:  "I  am  authorized  to  give  you  an  assur- 
ance that,  if  the  German  fleet  comes  into  the 
Channel  or  through  the  North  Sea  to  under- 
take hostile  operations  against  French  coasts 
or  shipping,  the  British  fleet  will  give  all  the 
protection  in  its  power." 

In  the  telegram  in  which  Sir  Edward  Grey 
communicated  this  declaration  to  the  British 
Ambassador  in  Paris  it  is  said: 

"I  pointed  out  that  we  had  very  large  ques- 
tions and  most  difficult  issues  to  consider,  and 
that  Government  felt  they  could  not  bind 
themselves  to  declare  war  upon  Germany 
necessarily  if  war  broke  out  between  France 
and  Germany  to-morrow,  but  it  was  essential 
to  the  French  Government,  whose  fleet  had 
long  been  concentrated  in  the  Mediterranean, 
to  know  how  to  make  their  dispositions  with 
their  north  coast  entirely  undefended.  We 
therefore  thought  it  necessary  to  give  them 


194  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

this  assurance.  It  did  not  bind  us  to  go  to 
war  with  Germany  unless  the  German  fleet 
took  the  action  indicated,  but  it  did  give  a 
security  to  France  that  would  enable  her  to 
settle  the  disposition  of  her  own  Mediterra- 
nean fleet." 

Undoubtedly  it  would  have  suited  Sir  Ed- 
ward Grey  and  his  friends  better  if  they  could 
have  been  sure  of  the  defeat  of  Germany  with- 
out risking  a  single  British  ship  or  British 
cannon.  If  they  could  have  so  prescribed  for 
Germany  the  manner  in  which  it  should  carry 
on  war,  if  they  could  have  so  inspired  it  with 
fear  that  the  failure  of  its  campaign  was  cer- 
tain, then,  of  course,  England  would  have 
been  glad  to  remain  neutral,  and  would  have 
filled  its  mouth  with  still  more  beautiful  cant 
phrases  than  it  now  does  over  freedom  and 
justice,  over  its  mission  to  protect  the  smaller 
nations — phrases  calculated  for  those  who  are 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  195 

simple  enough  to  mistake  the  disguised  wolf 
for  a  pious  sheep. 

The  true  state  of  affairs  will  not  always  re- 
main concealed  even  in  England. 

Nor  has  it  ever  been  wholly  concealed.  Be- 
fore the  cabinet  reached  its  decision,  the  voices 
of  the  most  important  men  had  been  raised 
against  a  war  on  behalf  of  Servia  and  Russia 
against  the  German  Empire  and  Austria.  One 
need9  only  to  recall  flaming  articles  of  the 
Manchester  Guardian,  the  New  Statesman, 
and  even  of  the  ministerial  Westminster  Ga- 
zette. One  recalls  the  declaration  of  the  Ox- 
ford professors,  who  termed  such  a  war  a 
crime  against  culture;  above  all  may  be  re- 
called the  withdrawal  of  the  three  cabinet 
members,  Morley,  Trevelyan  and  Burns,  each 
a  name  whose  weight  would  outbalance  a 
dozen  Churchills  and  Greys  if  genius  and 
political  highmindedness  could  be  weighed. 


196  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

One  can  recall  the  manifesto  of  the  Independ- 
ent Labor  Party,  which  declared  in  clear  and 
true  words :  "England  is  not  at  war  for  op- 
pressed nations  or  on  behalf  of  the  Belgian 
neutrality."  One  recalls  the  courageous  inter- 
vention of  the  upright  Scotch  labor  leader, 
Keir  Hardie,  in  the  House  of  Commons.  One 
recalls  further  the  proclamation  of  the  former 
leader  of  the  Labor  Party,  Ramsay  Macdon- 
ald,  and  the  manifesto,  already  referred  to,  of 
Bernard  Shaw  (Common  Sense  About  the 
War).  And  finally,  H.  N.  Brailsford  has  but 
recently  directed  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
report  of  the  Belgian  charge  d'affaires  in  St. 
Petersburg,  of  which  we  have  already  re- 
marked that  it  throws  the  clearest  light  upon 
the  situation,  has  been  utterly  suppressed  in 
England.  Brailsford  says:  "A  word  could 
have  been  spoken  which  would  have  preserved 
peace,  England's  word  to  Russia — 'If  you  mo- 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  197 

bilize  against  Germany  before  all  resources  of 
diplomacy  have  been  exhausted,  we  shall  con- 
sider you  as  the  assailant  and  will  not  use  a 
man  or  a  ship  to  help  you.'  Sir  Edward  Grey 
did  not  say  this  word." 

Sir  Edward  Grey  could  not  say  this  word 
because  it  was  his  secret  wish  that  Germany 
should  be  forced  into  war,  even  though  it 
would  have  pleased  him  better  if  Germany 
could  have  suffered  a  severe  defeat  without 
British  help.  Because  he  and  his  associates 
believed  that  only  British  help  could  make 
this  defeat  certain,  he  promised  it,  and  he 
Was  not  in  the  position  to  state  a  condition 
under  which  Germany  could  have  been  as- 
sured of  Britain's  neutrality. 

Our  consideration  of  modern  English  his- 
tory teaches  us  to  look  upon  the  English  peo- 
ple as  a  genuine  Epimetheus.    There  is  never 


198  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

a  time  when  it  cannot  say  to  itself:  "Sad 
delusion  vanished  like  mist." 1  Shame  and 
repentance  took  its  place.  The  cultured  Eng- 
lishman thinks  with  shame  of  the  piracy,  mur- 
der and  arson  that  have  established  his  colo- 
nial empire.  He  recalls  with  shame  and  re- 
pentance the  slave  trade,  once  praised  as  a 
pillar  of  the  empire.  He  knows  that  the  con- 
quest of  India  proceeded  along  ways  paved 
with  treachery  and  broken  promises,  with 
cruelties  of  every  variety;  he  knows  that  sys- 
tematic mistreatment  caused  the  loss  of  the 
Thirteen  Colonies,  which  grouped  themselves 
around  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  and  that  the 
same  narrow  commercial  spirit  caused  his  an- 
cestors to  take  the  part  of  the  emigrants 
against  the  French  Republic.  Even  the  six 
professors  of  modern  history  at  Oxford,  with 
their  feeble  knowledge  of  history,  know  that 

1Epimetheus,  in  Goethe's  "Pandora." 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  199 

England  did  Denmark  a  great  injustice  in 
1807.  Only  with  the  bitterest  regret  does 
every  informed  man  in  England  remember 
the  catastrophe  in  Afghanistan  in  1837-41; 
the  very  name  of  the  Opium  War  recalls 
shame  and  lasting  reproach.  And  the  Cri- 
mean War?  We  have  seen  that  no  intelligent 
person  now  defends  it,  no  matter  how  greatly 
it  was  rejoiced  at  in  the  beginning,  and  that 
it  has  been  plunged  into  the  depths  of  odium. 
Only  a  few  know  of  the  despotism  with  which 
the  small  states  of  the  Ionian  Islands  and  Ja- 
maica were  kept  in  check,  but  no  one  familiar 
with  the  facts  will  dare  to  assert  that  England 
there  defended  right,  or  even  freedom.  Only 
with  repugnance  does  the  Englishman  of  to- 
day permit  himself  to  be  reminded  that  his 
fathers  and  grandfathers  were  on  the  side  of 
the  slave-owners  against  Lincoln,  while  all 
■rmanv—  which    then    included    Austria — 


200  WARLIKE  ENGLAND 

never  for  a  moment  wavered  in  its  sympathies, 
and  in  the  States  themselves  many  thousands 
of  German  men  and  youth  enthusiastically 
took  up  arms  against  the  institution  of  slavery. 
That  the  Indian  Mutiny  was  due  to  the  grave 
guilt  of  the  East  India  Company  and  of  the 
governor  who  ruled  it  is  a  historical  fact 
which  is  proved  by  the  dissolution  of  this  com- 
pany which  immediately  followed. 

The  records  of  the  events  of  more  modern 
times — of  the  conquest  of  Egypt,  the  bom- 
bardment of  Alexandria,  the  bloody  verdict 
against  the  peasants  of  Denishwai,  the  Boer 
War  and  the  strangling  of  Persia — are  not  yet 
closed.  But  even  now  it  requires  a  great  as- 
surance to  assert  that  these  events,  so  far  as 
they  have  become  known,  inure  to  the  honor 
of  the  English  world-policy.  One  may  say 
that,  in  respect  also  of  these  machinations  and 
campaigns,  a  feeling  of  shame  and  penitence 


WARLIKE  ENGLAND  201 

has  become  almost  universal  among  right- 
thinking  people  of  the  United  Kingdom. 

There  is,  therefore,  adequate  reason  for  be- 
lieving that  this  feeling  in  regard  to  the 
causes  of  the  present  World  War  will  continue 
to  increase  and  gradually  reach  a  height  con- 
sonant with  the  terrible  magnitude  of  these 
events. 

From  all  that  has  been  here  presented  in 
unprejudiced  manner,  based  upon  the  testi- 
mony of  important  and  noted  English  authors, 
we  may  draw  the  conclusion  that  the  con- 
science of  the  English  people,  when  it  is  chal- 
lenged to  give  a  verdict  on  the  English  world- 
policy  and  its  motives,  will  not  be  able  to 
av)id  rinding  them  guilty  and  sentencing  them 
to  everlasting  condemnation. 


CONCLUSION 

When  Theseus  came  to  Crete,  the  Minotaur 
was  brought  before  him. 

"You  have  devoured  little  children  and 
youths,"  said  Theseus. 

The  Minotaur  trembled. 

"I  devoured  the  little  children  out  of  love," 
he  answered. 

"And  the  youths?"  asked  Theseus. 

"The  youths  out  of  ethical  motives." 

Theseus  drew  his  sword  and  struck  off  the 
monster's  head. 

The  Minotaur  of  modern  times  is  the  Brit- 
ish world  policy. 


202 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  WAR 

By  Karl  Federn 

A  lucid  presentation  of  the  underlying  causes  of  the  European  conflict  and  its 
meaning  to  the  nations  involved.  By  documents  and  other  recently  discovered 
evidence,  Mr.  Federn  makes  out  his  brief — that  England,  scenting  danger  to  her 
own  prosperity  in  the  development  of  German  science  and  inventive  genius,  sought 
by  the  aid  of  alliances  with  France  and  Russia  to  crowd  Germany  out  of  the  markets 
of  the  world.  The  result  of  this  policy,  furthered  by  ambitious  politicians,  resulted 
in  this  war,  disastrous  to  this  isolation  program.  Written  dispassionately,  this 
book  aims  to  disseminate  a  correct  idea  of  the  origin  of  this  titanic  struggle. 

i2mo.    Cloth  boutid.  $1.00  Net. 

THE  TRAGEDY  OF  BELGIUM 

By  Richard  Grasshoff 

A  clear  statement  of  facts  concerning  the  alleged  atrocities  of  German  soldiers 
in  Belgium,  giving  for  the  first  time  in  popular  form  reports  and  documents  refuting 
absolutely  the  charges  spread  through  the  press  of  the  world  by  British  and  Belgian 
interests.  Deceived  by  the  government,  the  controlled  Belgian  press  inflamed  the 
ignorant  populace  to  franctireur  barbarities  which  compelled  the  German  Army  to 
take  stern  measures  to  protect  i  ts  line  of  march.  The  creation  of  the  Belgian  Inves- 
tigation Commission,  within  three  days  after  hostilities  began,  set  a  premium  upon 
the  discovery  and  reporting  of  such  activities,  and  the  skilful  coloring  and  publica- 
tion of  such  instigated  reports  became  a  formidable  instrument  in  the  war  policy 
of  England.  This  compact  narrative  of  what  actually  occurred  constitutes  one  of 
the  most  astounding  revelations  of  the  hour,  and  is  bound  to  work  tremendous 
changes  in  the  world's  judgment  of  the  events  immediately  following  the  outbreak 
of  the  war. 

i2mo.    Cloth.     With  Appendix  and  Illustrations.    $1.00  Net. 

WARLIKE  ENGLAND  AS  SEEN 

BY  HERSELF 

By  Ferdinand  Tonnies 

Professor  at  the  University  of  Kiel;  Advising  Editor  of  the  American 
Journal  of  Sociology, 

A  scholarly  and  comprehensive  indictment  of  England's  overweening  lust  for 

■nqucst.     Out  of  the  mouths  of  her  own  statesmen  and  historians  she  is 

rfctedol  the  appalling  ( rimet  of  piracy,  murder  and  arson  in  the  establishment 

of  her  vast  colonial  empire  for  the  benefit  of  her  so  i  ailed  upper  (lasses.     The  hot- 

of  her  once  vaunted  slave  trade,  the  conquest  of  India,  the  outbreaks  in  Afghan- 

i  jypt  and  the  outrages  of  the  Boer  war  have  become  a  lasting 

shame.     If.  the  balani  e  of  power  among  nations  for  her  own 

set  forth  in  this  volume  as  the  active  determining    factor  in 

rortd'a ;  war. 


Cloth  Bo  $1.00 


Germany  and  England 

By  GENERAL  FRIEDRICH  von  BERNHARDI 


General  Bernhardi  shows  that  the  great  European  War  was 
forced  by  England — that  Germany  is  not  to  blame.  He  stoutly 
maintains  that  England  as  well  as  France  and  Belgium  violated 
the  neutrality  agreement  before  ever  a  German  soldier  set  foot  on 
Belgian  soil;  and  that  world-power,  not  world-dominion,  is  the 
key-note  of  Germany's  activity.  As  he  sees  it,  Germany  has  always 
fought  for  liberty,  while  England  is  fighting  for  oppression.  Ger- 
many desires  only  a  free,  autonomous  development  alongside  the 
other  great  cultural  nations  of  the  world.  And  if  Germany  wins 
in  the  great  struggle,  there  is  not  even  the  shadow  of  menace  to  the 
United  States  in  Germany's  attitude.  This  is  the  first  book  General 
Bernhardi  I  n  itten  since  the  War  began,  and  it  is  also  in  a  sense 
a  reply  to  r  Cramb's  attack  on  his  writings.     Nowhere 

can  there  bt  .„  ^cured  a  clearer  understanding  of  the  German  position 
in  the  prese'  it  war  than  by  a  perusal  of  this  extraordinarily  direct 
and  pertinent  contribution  to  war  literature. 

"Written  in  admirable  English  and  possessing  a  style  of  argument  which  is 
intensely  interesting  and  convincing." — Baltimore  Sun. 

"The  American  public  will  surely  appreciate  'Germany  and  England.'"-— 
St.^Louis  ^Republic. 

"The  clear  logic,  unfaltering  courage  and  insistent  disposition  to  call  a  spade  a 
spade,  that  marked  von  Bernhardi's  other  books,  are  apparent  also  in  this  latest 
rejoinder  to  his  world  critics." — Phila.  North  American. 

"As  a  protest  from  this  much-discussed  German  general  and  writer,  this  book 
is  exceedingly  interesting." — Boston  Advertiser. 

"  General  Von  Bernhardi's  book  will  claim  first  place  in  the  attention  of  American 
students  of  the  War." — Springfield  .Republican. 

"A  brilliantly  written  book  and  most  informing  as  a  human  document." — Phila. 
Ledger. 

"General  Friedrich  von  Bernhardi,  who  has  caused  more  newspaper  discussion 
and  magazine  comment  than  all  the  other  war  writers  together,  has  written  another 
book,  'Germany  and  England,'  which  is  well  worth  reading." — Sacramento  Union. 

"For  one  desiring  to  know  the  German  viewpoint,  nothing  more  succinct  and 
stronger  can  be  had  than  this  volume  by  Bernhardi." — Boston  Herald. 

12mo,  Cloth  Bound.     With  Portrait  of  the  Author. 
50  cents  Net. 

G.  W.  DILLINGHAM  CO.,  Publishers,  New  York 


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